Polyphonic Spree

Went and saw the Polyphonic Spree the other night. It was a really cool show, with a wide variety of acts. The opener was an acordian player who sounded somewhat like Meatloaf, and told tales like Jack Black, while I probably wouldn’t rock out to it in the car, I quite enjoyed his set. He played an amazing We Are the Champions cover (most tunes were original). The second band, The Sleepy Jackson, was fantastic. They were extremely tight, and blended some good hard tunes with some mellow riffs and psychedelic jams beautifully. They’re out of Australia, a country which has been producing some great music recently (read Jet). And then there was the Polyphonic Spree. What a fantastic, inspiring show they put on. I counted 25 on the stage. people that is…harp, keyboards, choir, flute, horns, and more, plus your standard rock band. It was happy music, and they were up there because they loved it. While my personal taste runs more towards The Sleepy Jackson, the Poly’s were great. Loud, thick, very well arranged, catchy, inspiring, all sorts of stuff. And really cool was that before they came on, they had a ‘fantastic local talent’, a throat singer, come on and jam for 5 minutes or so. How cool was that? The layers of noise this one guy created were amazing, with the familiar gutteral noise, and behind it a resonant wave, rising and falling with body movements. Thanks to friends W and L for hooking us up on this one!