A high school production of Jesus Christ Superstar or annual Branch Davidian jamboree? Polyphonic Spree Hallelujah Time Everybody has voices in their head. Little angels and devils telling us to sing nice gospel tracks about God and videotape yourself having sex with your underage "goddaughter." For Tim DeLaughter, it wasn't a voice so much as a sound. The sound he heard made about as much logical sense as "If you build it, they will come" but has had nearly as magical effect on those who've witnessed his musical equivalent of a baseball diamond in a cornfield. Like anyone who has had a song lodged in their head, no matter how much you like it, it becomes a nuisance after while—backseat driver to all the other things you'd rather think about. A soundtrack that fits on one side of a 45 and loops the last groove into itself. You'd do anything to get it out of your head. So, DeLaughter did something remarkable. He rounded up a posse, and gave birth to one of the more intriguing musical phenomena to hit the scene since Parliament. This is the story of a troupe of 24 choir-robed freaks called the Polyphonic Spree. You might have seen them on the MTV Video Music Awards, introduced by Marilyn Manson who claimed the band was the love child spawned by him and co-presenter Mandy Moore. Maybe the news clip about the mic that was mistaken for a pipe bomb and shut down a major airport. Perhaps you caught them when they opened for David Bowie on his recent tour. You might even have sampled the Kool-Aid, as they say, and come back for another frothy glass. But enlightened or not, come along for it's quite the ride. Warning: Tim DeLaughter is going to sound like a crazy, psychedelic-poppin' hippie with no perspective on reality at points in this story. His joyous, hopeful naiveté seems to stem from the same place that it comes from for all who have seen the Spree, — that's really the most cultish thing of all. The Polyphonic Spree are a band that take jaded indie rock hipsters—people who have seen it all and are tired of having NME and CMJ tell them what the next big thing is—and turn them into massive-grinning, beaming, glossy-eyed freaks with no plausible explanation for why an admittedly cheesy at points concert, has left them feeling truly elated. But don't let it get to you. You've really got to try it for yourself before you're allowed to call these folks dorks. We'll start this story four years ago. Someday, this will all become ancient history, a tale well- known and passed along through the generations. But with anything that is Biblical in proportions and spiritual in nature, it is best to begin at the Genesis. And as we are still close to the start of this great journey, we shall not presume to assume that you know this story already. Polyphonic Spree's founder/leader/singer/conductor, Mr. DeLaughter, is sitting in the second seat of one of the three generic white 15-person touring vans that move this carnival from place to place as he tries to shed some light on the this band for CREEM. He speaks with exuberance that almost, but doesn't entirely mask the fatigue of someone trying to paddle an aircraft carrier of a band in a sea of corporately polished hip-hop crap. Thanks to the tinted windows, we are not disturbed by the fans gathering for the second of Spree's two nights in Chicago. We are only interrupted by percussionist Mike Dillon poking his head in to grab his robe for the night, but we'll come back to the robes later. As is the nature of things, this story begins with an ending. DeLaughter's band, Tripping Daisy, had just disintegrated. The group had hit its stride and stumbled, reeling from any number of factors, but chiefly from the OD-death of guitarist Wes Berggren. "We'd done [Jesus Hits the] Atom Bomb," DeLaughter said. "We'd done our last record. [the self-titled final album]. Wes didn't get to finish one of those songs, his dad really finished it on the Rhodes. "The band was kind of deteriorating at that time. It was either going to blow up or we were going to change directions and just go completely to a new direction which may have been the Polyphonic Spree, I don't know, but something had to happened. I think Wes made that choice for everybody in the band. When he left, that literally was it. I shut down and said 'I'm not doing this anymore,' I didn't want to do it without Wes." DeLaughter dances around the subject of Berggren's "leaving," never quite coming out and saying the word "died." Death and birth so often go hand-in-hand, and the beginning stages of the Polyphonic Spree are no exception. "[His death] just took the life out of us as well — we were wiped out by that whole incident. The birth of my second child was happening. It was a crazy time, kind of a coming of age, the start of the next stage of my life. It was a weird time. It wasn't the time to start a 25-piece band, that's for sure, but it turned out to be the most perfect time to start it. "Wes is responsible basically for everything that's happened." DeLaughter looks around at where the Tripping Daisy folks have wound up. Drummer Ben Curtis is in the Reprise-signed buzz band Secret Machines. Phil Karnats has just put out his first solo album. And of course, Delaughter, Mark Pirro and Bryan Wakeland are less than 1/8th of the Spree. He gushes excitement about the present and the past. "There's a lot of people who didn't really realize what a contributor [Tripping Daisy] was and what we were actually doing..." He trails off... "I miss it terribly." So he did what any right-minded Texan would do. He started a cult. "The first parts were friends and family. I just spoke to a few close friends. Mark and Bryan were in Tripping Daisy. Then I went to some family members and put the word out and I was able to get 13 people. After that, I basically just said I'm looking for these instruments and people started coming up and showing up and saying 'hey, I'd like to sing in your choir.,' or 'hey, I play this, I play that' and it just came together really quickly. It was the easiest thing I ever put together. "It took me almost four years to put Tripping Daisy together. That was with four people. Because you're trying to find this certain person …You have got to have that musical connection. That thing that works. And there's this personality that's morphed within that. And when it's there, it's strong. "But with this band, I never even looked at that. I put a blind eye to all of that. I just said, do you play this instrument and do you improvise on that instrument thoroughly. There's a lot of people who play these instruments who can't do what [Spree] do today. They don't understand what you mean when you say 'improvise'," he said. And if you think a 25-person band can't improvise, you should sneak into a sound check some day and see that these kids can really cook with no more guidance than DeLaughter telling them all to play in "G." When they're not on stage, they break off and enjoy the various cities alone or in small groups. DeLaughter himself spends some time with his family. His wife, Julia, sings in Spree's nine- person choir. Their three children are on the road as well and can be seen running around backstage in their mini robes. By not instilling a GroupThink to hold it together, Spree formed factions and communities within the community. "I think that the fact that I didn't put so much emphasis on that is why it works for itself," he said of the band's vibe. "It lubricates itself like a classroom. You don't choose the kids you're going to be in school with. You just show up and you're stuck with them for a year. You might hate the teacher but you don't hate the class, the kids and everything in there. They're little sub- groups that are made in there, and it works. Musically, we all landed on the same page, so it works. Our classroom has become so extraordinary. We're making a new class, that's what we're doing!" The Polyphonic Spree defy description in many ways. Shows often begin or end with a harp solo. The French Horn and flute figure prominently, but so does the aforementioned choir. And the Theremin, can't forget that—especially as the percussionist comes across the stage, hands his drum to someone else picks the thing up over his head and starts to windmill through it like Townsend. Words like "Euphoric" and "Ecstatic" come to mind, which can't be said of, say, a Sonic Youth show. But mostly it leaves everyone at a blissfully ignorant loss of words. "We tried to describe the band ourselves a couple years ago because we sensed something happening," said DeLaughter and as he talks, he gets more excited and heads off on his own tangent.