All the major organized religions are archaic anachronisms, cultivating
stasis — and, in such, inertia, and, in such, death — in all the tenets
and traditions they dogmatically cling to. So it's no surprise that the
spiritual searchings of modern man lead to cults, where beliefs are
fashioned from the au courant of the new age, and where structure is
forsaken for more mercurial interpretations of the essence of
existence. Some of the greatest cults, these days, trail in the wake of
popular culture, from grand institutions like Tolkienism and Trekkieism
through all those collectophile kids who find truth and wisdom in,
like, Dashboard Confessional b-sides. But when the forms of
popular culture themselves model themselves after new-age religious
cults, does that make them more likely to engender devotion, or be
dismissed as some novelty act? Such a theosophical question
reverberates loudly throughout Together We're Heavy, the second album
for the Polyphonic Spree, the sunbeaming-pop orchestra whose 22-member
rank-and-file ranks kit themselves out in robes while singing songs — part pop-song, part hymn — that seem in thrall to the
idea of some greater sense of "universe." In their Beginning Stages,
the outfit openly took their cues from wacky Christian-revivalist clan
the Danielson Famile, but where the Danielsons have always seemed like
some considered, twisted take on the artifice of the traveling family
of faith-loving entertainers, and, in such, have always kept themselves
at an idiosyncratic distance, the Polyphonic Spree seem like they're
genuinely opening up their arms, inviting you into their
we're-all-one-big-family enclave that offers hope and joy amidst the
hopelessness and cynicism of the modern world.
On this second album, this crew expand on everything from their debut,
trying to outdo the warped Disneyist fantasias of Mercury Rev, as Tim
DeLaughter leads his disciples into a grander sounding surround-sound
epoch, where all those instrumental colorings are clearer, and the
individual qualities of the voices in their choir shine through even
when they're all belting it out together. The lyrics are, once more, a
collection of peace-love-and-music slogans dressed up for the dawning of
the Age of, uh, Taurus, or something. Together We're Heavy finds many
of the refrains from the first disc recast in different settings; things
tend to focus on love, the sun, and the passing of time, these
reaching a nice nexus when "Two Thousand Places" concludes "And time
will show the way/ And love will shine today/ And time will go away/ So
love can come." In these proclamations, the Spree sound more and more
like they're spouting cultish cant; but, whilst others may be turned off
if it turns out this game of dress-ups is really for real, for me the
presence of a real religion at the core of all this would be the best
medicine to redress the quick slide into the realm of "novelty act" that
looms in the Polyphonic Spree's future.
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