The Polyphonic Spree: The more, the merrier

The latest in the long history of curious pop line-ups is a 25-piece choral band from Dallas. Steve Jelbert asks the leader of the Polyphonic Spree what it is about them that makes audiences want to own matching robes

Very occasionally, you witness something that leaves you scratching your head and wondering: "Did that really happen?" This was the case when the Polyphonic Spree, Dallas's leading 25-piece choral symphonic pop band, made their British debut last month at the Bowie-curated Meltdown festival. Wearing matching robes, like overgrown choristers, and dashing off an impressive version of the host's suitably apocalyptic "Five Years", just in case he was in the building, they left the audience stunned.

A follow-up performance a few days later in the foyer, attended by a large walk-up audience attracted by word of mouth, was even better, while a couple of shows in the tiny rock-hole that is Camden's Barfly saw the band emerge, one by one, from the crowd to hysteria.

It's quite a look, but the Spree's leader and mastermind, Tim DeLaughter (it rhymes with "slaughter") reveals that their appearance is based on rather more prosaic considerations. "It'd be enormously distracting to have 23 people in street clothes," he explains in a Texan drawl. "I thought it'd look cool and unify the band. If you start mixing music and clothes people get real distracted. The show would be over and people would've missed the music. Everyone's saying that it's a religious experience, but not me. That was not my intention."

The Polyphonic Spree is DeLaughter's dream band. He was once a member of the local heroes Tripping Daisy (one week in the British Top 75, greater success at home), but his band collapsed after the death of the guitarist, Wes Berggren. "My friend had a drug overdose and I couldn't picture doing it any more without him. We'd been together about 10 years; we knew what we were about. But it just wasn't the same. So I decided to call it quits. I'd never had anybody that close to me die," he says. "You react in weird ways."

"For a couple of years I was really down. I'd just had a little girl, who basically saved my wife and me at that time. I reached a point where I started reflecting, wondering, 'What have I been doing my whole life?' And I thought, 'I'm 36 years old. It's time to attempt a sound I've always wanted to make.' That's what the Polyphonic Spree started as."

He was inspired again on hearing "my very first 45" on a trailer for a movie – the unlikely "Beach Baby" by First Class, a loving homage to the Beach Boys by a gaggle of British session musicians, which charted big in America in the early Seventies. "It struck a nerve. I hadn't listened to it since I bought it. My lifetime's experiences have led me to a sound like that. I'm a huge fan of old Disney soundtracks, too. I've been a sunny-pop kinda guy my whole life."

True, any half-trained psychiatrist might get a symposium's worth out of such confessions, but as music it works. The band's first album, The Beginning Stages of..., eschews song titles, numbering tracks from 1 to 10. But stand-outs such as the epic "Sun" and the glorious single "Soldier Girl" (to give them approximate names) are sunny pop delights, not miles from the Flaming Lips or Mercury Rev, but bigger and dafter and more, well, Texan. Not that DeLaughter even planned on being directly involved at the project's inception.

"Initially I wasn't even going to be in the band – I was just going to put it together and watch it. But it's taken on a life of its own," he admits. Forced into action when booked on a bill with the not dissimilar Grandaddy, he put together a 13-piece line-up in three weeks.

"I put the word out, got some people. What I didn't count on is that when these people came in they'd improvise their part. There's no sheet music in this band. These guys brought this whole new element," he says, with genuine excitement. "It's taken on a life of its own. A lot of these classical guys have never been in a band before, and I say to them, 'You have no idea where this is going to end up.' " Some of the younger ones (the line-up ranges in age from 16 to 36) had never even left Texas or flown before. But the band members – up to 27 musicians – look after themselves.

"They're young adults and they're doing just fine. I had more problems keeping up with a four- or five-piece band than I do with this one," says DeLaughter. And if you fancy it, for the price of a robe from the merchandise stand, you can join them. "People were singing along at the shows, so I thought, 'These people should be part of the choir. Why not sell them these robes?' " he confesses in a fine display of fundamentalist capitalism. Then there's shirt sponsorship. "We could put patches here. We're a virgin canvas ready to go," ponders DeLaughter lightheartedly.

"I never saw the size of the group as being an issue. The only time was when I found out just how much it was going to cost to fly over here. Before, it was: 'The stage is too small? We've just got to get on the floor', or: 'The van's too small? We get another van.' You just make adjustments."

"People said, 'You're going to be all right around Dallas, but you're not going to play out of Dallas.' Then we'd play Austin, but people would say, 'You're not going to tour with this thing.' Then we got to London, then New York."

Luckily a much-needed deal looks in the offing for this most idiosyncratic outfit, who even bring decent weather to the dampest of festivals. ("It's been a running joke. In Dublin it was extremely overcast, and in the middle of our set the clouds parted.") As DeLaughter says, "I always wanted a choir. Now I've got a choir." Dreams do come true.

'Soldier Girl' is out next week on Fierce Panda records. The Polyphonic Spree return to the UK next month

The Strangest Line-ups in Pop

POPULATION II

A few decades before the White Stripes, came the world's first "power duo". Consisting of Randy Holden, a guitarist who'd previously played in Blue Cheer (much loved by California's biker hordes), and the drummer and keyboardist Chris Lockheed, formerly of the psychedelic KAK, they played fearsomely sludgy rock, largely because it's hard to drum and play keys simultaneously. When all 20 of Holden's amps were ripped off, he quit and went into fishing. Damn.

ROC

Some years ago, ROC seemed to be on the bill of every festival in the country, probably because some evil bookers reckoned it'd be a laugh to send out a wafty electronic band consisting of a couple of men in white who might have led a cult on Brookside, accompanied by the cast of Picnic at Hanging Rock in diaphanous dresses, into the dusty/muddy/crusty fields of Britain. The name supposedly stood for Reincarnation of Christ, by the way.

GLENN BRANCA

Possibly more New York than any other New York musician/conceptualist ever, Branca made his name by corralling huge ranks of guitarists (including Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo, surprise) to perform his alternately intricate then frightening guitar "symphonies". The first movement of "Symphony in E" is more, um, "E" than any other music ever performed. In fact it's little else. "Kerrang", as the onomatopoeic word has it.