The Polyphonic Spree don’t get out of city a lot. Since forming almost 25 years in the past, the Dallas band has constantly been a problem to pack up and ship out: At all times no less than 20 members; At all times a kitchen-sink-orchestra method to instrumentation, from normal rock-band gear to a wholesome dollop of brass and strings; and all the time some type of matching apparel that attracts cult-like comparisons.
So it’s a giant deal when the 24-member band pulls collectively its restricted assets, pauses its members’ day-job obligations, and piles right into a bus—particularly since no person makes tour buses for bands like this one.
“Most of your buses sleep 12; 13 is de facto pushing it,” Tim DeLaughter, the band’s lead singer and head songwriter, says from his Dallas house. “So we’ve to go on this bus referred to as the Sportstar, which is a hockey-team bus, and there isn’t any frills there. It is nothing however bunks—it might sleep 27 folks. We do not use it that always, however it’s the one bus on the town that may home the Polyphonic Spree.”
That bus is hauling the band to Bumbershoot this weekend. DeLaughter—who additionally acts because the band’s preacher, proselytizer, and admitted “hustler”—is raring to promote the Spree’s worthiness amongst the crowded competition schedule. His fervor in regards to the band’s first nationwide tour in a decade borders on spiritual: “We sit up for changing folks into our world, and that is what we do, particularly within the dwell state.”
When pressed on “convert” as his phrase alternative, DeLaughter ranges with me utilizing his born-and-raised Texas drawl: “We’re totally different, man. There’s nothing like this band. And I do know that it is loads for folks to absorb, in a single dose, however when you get on it… in case you let it go and the Spree will get its hooks in you, there’s nothing prefer it.”
That zeal, someplace between pariah and pusher, is well-earned. The Spree started life as a survival-mode response for DeLaughter after his first breakout band, the Nineties grunge-adjacent Tripping Daisy, broke up within the wake of a band member’s sudden demise. From that band’s ashes got here the Polyphonic Spree: a blast of unfiltered, major-key sound amongst lyrics of coping by means of despair, fashioned with an ever-evolving collective of Dallas music friends (together with, at one time, a guitarist named Annie Clark who finally reached solo stardom as St. Vincent). There’s all the time a choir, all the time some grand explosions of sound, and all the time a sure connection between performer and viewers that works higher on stage than on house audio system.
“To observe that occur, you possibly can see folks, like, their mouths are extensive open,” DeLaughter says about taking the Spree on the highway. “They’ve received this large smile on their face by the top of it, and so they’re simply in it. I’ve seen it occur, and it is cool—I do know that now we have got these guys. They’ll be followers for us without end, man.”
The Spree’s newest album, 2023’s Salvage Enterprise, is the closest the band has come to scaling its sound seamlessly between the stage and the house. Solemnity washes over the signature tune “Part 45 (Wishful, Courageous, and True)” as a Simon & Garfunkel-worthy strum of acoustic guitar is briefly disturbed by totally different Spree parts—a flush of violin and horn right here, a twinkle of harp there, all whereas DeLaughter urges the meditation alongside in near-falsetto: “Laughter is disguising the richest rain we knew.”
On this tune and others, the Spree reveals a stage of restraint that DeLaughter describes as “militant”—resisting the band’s signature urge to play each instrument and voice concurrently. That newfound dynamism received DeLaughter so excited upon the album’s launch in late 2023 that he didn’t anticipate the remainder of the Spree to take day off from their menagerie of day jobs to “tour” the outcomes. (DeLaughter says the band counts amongst its ranks professors, music academics, and “a number for a Pluckers [a chicken wing chain] on Wednesday nights the place he calls out trivia questions.” He admits doing “building stuff on the aspect” himself, as effectively.)
After packing his automobile with turbines, a PA, and audio system on tripods, DeLaughter hit the highway with a replica of Salvage Enterprise in hand—and nary a proper invite to truly host any of his guerrilla listening events. Whether or not taking part in amidst the open expanse of Joshua Tree, the cliffs of San Diego, Topanga Canyon, or perhaps a church whose members stepped up after cops almost confiscated the listening events’ gear, the month-long tour operated completely through social media DMs and DeLaughter’s enthusiasm. For the 58-year-old, having as few as three folks present as much as a specific listening get together had a stunning impression.
“It was just like the early days—I would be in a van for 3 months at a time with Tripping Daisy, and also you go and there is two folks on the market,” DeLaughter says. “Like I used to be beginning yet again, probably not figuring out who was going to be there and in the event that they’re even into it or not. It was like spreading the phrase yet again, simply doing it in a very totally different means, the place I used to be wanting folks to tune out, get away from the telephone, and have a look at the sky and hearken to an album that complemented that atmosphere.”
Whether or not partaking within the grey authorized zone of out of doors listening events or sustaining the Spree’s common Texas tour dates, together with an annual Dallas Christmas live performance streak of over 20 years, DeLaughter admits a constant impulse drives him—the identical one which not solely egged the Spree into existence however spurred his first band into motion.
“If you happen to hearken to Tripping Daisy [lyrics], there’s a component of overcoming what life dishes out,” DeLaughter says. “Music’s develop into my vessel to precise myself and speak myself by means of this factor referred to as life. With this band, it turns into extra technicolor than something I’ve ever performed earlier than. I’ve all the time used these songs, this file to persuade myself of issues, of having the ability to transfer from level A to B. Nothing’s modified. It is simply how I am wired and what I want with the intention to get me the place I must go.”
No matter you name them—a band, a collective, a cult, or a bunch of professors and trivia hosts—the Spree continues to be working as an act of sonic marvel. A “regular” Spree second may see a full choir scream-singing, “smiling on the goddess of evil, I discovered to fly,” over a mattress of horns and amplified guitars, perhaps with extra dynamism or life-weary survival behind them, however in any other case carrying the identical spirit that when blasted out of iPod commercials or toured for David Bowie within the early ‘00s. Depend your self fortunate that such a sensation continues to be round right now, nonetheless being delivered to your metropolis through a rickety previous hockey bus.
The Polyphonic Spree play Bumbershoot’s Mural Stage Sunday, September 1, at 6:25 pm.
