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Ask Your Doctor if Spree is Right For You:
The Polyphonic Spree

Together We’re Heavy (Hollywood)

by Joe O’Brien

Surely we all feel like the gloomy egg-shaped character in the Zoloft ads from time to time. But who really has the will to ask a doctor about it, let alone brave sexual side effects, nausea, diarrhea, insomnia and sleepiness (ga?), just to become an egg whose frown turns ever so slightly upside down? And one freaking butterfly? That’s all the happiness that enters the world when the circles coming to and from Nerve A even out with the circles coming to and from Nerve B?

The Polyphonic Spree, on the other hand, spits out endless fields of butterflies, and rainbows, and incense and peppermints and all that great stuff. If you’ve never heard or read about The Spree, six words: Wayne Coyne and the Technicolor Godspell. They make unrelenting joy revival concept albums about how wonderful the sun is. They love that thing so much, before the end of the first song on Together We’re Heavy, they’re already reprising “Hey! It’s the sun!” The rest of the album is, but not entirely, more of the same of The Beginning Stages- now their robes come in colors, the pianos bounce a little more on “Hold Me Now” and “Everything Starts at the Seam,” the guitar throws in a dash of fuzz in “When the Fool Becomes a King” (which then reprises, yup, “Hey! It’s the Sun!”). Also, the hymns last twice as long this time, so enduring the entire record may make you as restless as a six-year old Catholic in Latin Mass, so be sure to break Heavy into 25-mg doses instead of the factory-packaged 100. But at least it’s not dangerously habit-forming, and only if you are the sourest snickerpuss in the galaxy will you experience any side effects involving bodily waste.

You Dig? You’ll Dig...

The Flaming Lips
The Soft Bulletin
Spiritualized
Let it Come Down
Original Motion
Picture Soundtrack
Godspell

Discography

The Beginning Stages Of... (Good, 2002)