All My CDs, pt 93: Together We're Heavy

Together We’re Heavy - The Polyphonic Spree

I got this album in the summer of 2012 after hearing a few songs on my Pandora station. I’m not sure exactly what I was thinking. Probably that the songs sounded good, and they do. In retrospect, listening to it produces more confusion in me than any other emotion. Not a bad kind of confusion, mind you. More a confusion that asks “What is this thing that I’m hearing and why is it so infectiously merry?” Do I understand it? No. Will I buy another of their albums soon? Probably.

The Polyphonic Spree is a little like The Arcade Fire, except that their lyrics make a bit less sense than “a million little gods causing rainstorms turning every good thing to rust”, and their overall mood is a bit cheerier. Like The Arcade Fire, they make an art form of having too many instruments, seemingly jumbled together with ostensibly very little discipline but with lots of joyful energy. (I say “seemingly" and “ostensibly” because I’m sure it takes a great deal of discipline and organization to get that many people to play harmoniously together, no matter how “clean" and “orderly" the resulting sound.) Which must have been what they were aiming for, because that’s the literal meaning of the band’s name.

Now’s the time when I like to tell you a few of my favorite songs on the album and what I like about them, but I’m not sure if I can do that. I have favorite passages, but the divisions between songs don’t seem to correlate to where those passages begin and end. And I wouldn’t be able to tell you why I find it so gratifying to hear the words “Hail to the sky / Hail to the sky / it’s time to watch a show / time to watch a show / the trees wanna grow / the trees wanna grow / grow grow grow.”

The trees wanna grow....

grow grow grow...

Next: Californication