I first saw The Polyphonic Spree in concert in 2005, when they were supporting Together We’re Heavy. It was an almost overwhelming experience, a torrent of sound unlike anything I’d heard before. I saw them again at the Across the Narrows Festival later that year, but it’s been a year and a half since I last had the chance to experience the best live band playing today. I’m not sure if last night’s show at the Warsaw was my best experience with them, but it certainly seemed to be Tim DeLaughter’s. The Spree frontman kept things going for nearly two and a half hours, drawing out the encore to the point that it was as long, if not longer than the actual set. It was a high energy, incredibly fun show, a reminder of just how powerful people getting together to play music can be.
The show opened with Tim cutting a heart into a giant piece of red paper to reveal the band, who were wearing their black fragile army uniforms. They opened with “Running Away,” the exhilarating first single from the new album. The first time I saw them, the sound was mixed so loud that I essentially lost the higher frequencies midway through the show. This venue felt like my elementary school auditorium, just a really big space, and the sound was mixed much better, such that I didn’t have any more hearing issues than at your average concert. Now, this does sacrifice some of the initial impact of hearing them, but it was good in the long term. I still think “We Sound Amazed” is the optimum show opening song, it’s a shame it’s drifted off the setlist.
But, we can’t live in the past, the new album has plenty of great tracks, and nearly all of them were performed during that initial set. “Get Up and Go” was an early highlight, bringing a heavy guitar riff to the fore, in a way you don’t usually hear with the band. “The Fragile Army” was also fantastic, letting the chorus do some weirder vocalizations than usual. But, even though the new album is on par with the rest of their work, it’s tougher to get into live because I just don’t know those songs as well, and neither does the audience. With a couple of exceptions, no one is really thrilled to hear the new song, in the same that they are when Tim reaches back to the first two albums. That’s an inevitable consequence of doing a show promoting a new album, particularly one that came out a couple of weeks ago.
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