A Spreeful Noise

The Polyphonic Spree
w/ Videology
The Pageant
St. Louis, MO
Saturday, August 4, 2007
General Admission
$18.00

I'm still not sure what I think of the Polyphonic Spree. Roy and I first heard of them a few years ago. They opened for David Bowie and were getting a lot of press. We had a different opening act for our local Bowie show, but Roy was curious. He bought their album. I watched the live DVD included with their CD and thought it looked interesting.

I think they played here a couple years ago, but my parents were visiting then so we didn't go. They came back, and to the Pageant. Just down the road and across the city limits into St. Louis from our home in University City.

I've been through enough uncomfortable shows with smoking and bad sitelines that I have a whole slew of coping mechanisms. The Pageant can be bad when it's set up for limited seating and smoking - I only really enjoy it if I'm in the front row of the pit or up in the balcony. The raised front row of the seated section is alright, as long as I'm sitting at the end and not next to a smoker. I like to breathe, people! The line for over-21 early entry seating is in the bar and opens at 5. We got there a little after 6 and were first in line. I guess they weren't expecting too big a crowd, because the balcony was closed. We grabbed a space in the front row of the seated section. I had to admit, they do a decent job with air circulation, but I still wish it would just go non-smoking.

I'm still confused about the opening act. The show was billed as Polyphonic Spree with Videology. There was no opening act, but there was a screen showing 1980s-current alternative music videos. We saw Beck, Bjork, and the Buggles. I enjoyed them, but they got draining after a while because of the bass turned up so loud. Apparently this was Videology. But I went to Videology's myspace page, and it listed the Pageant show as postponed due to illness. I wonder what we missed. I was thinking that I wished this music had been considered dance music rather than the thumping-bass stuff which leaves me cold. And it was cool to see all the college kids singing along with Trevor and Geoff on Video Killed the Radio Star.

I guess the other fans knew what to expect. There were not a whole lot of people there after the doors opened. I was worried about the turnout. But more people showed up, so the seats were mostly full and the dance floor was crowded. The doors opened at 6:30pm and the band finally went on after 9pm. That was a long wait.

I wanted to like Polyphonic Spree better than I did. My friend Kathy saw them in Philly and said they were amazing. She also said they reminded her of Yes, although she doesn't like Yes. She described it as a "fullness of sound" and agreed with my comparison of multi-part harmonies and happy major key sound.

But I got bored. Maybe it was too soon to go to another concert of unfamiliar music. The band did have a full sound, but I don't think that was a good thing, it was a wall of sound and hard to discern what was being played. There were about 20 people on stage, and I kept mentally comparing this to Brian Wilson's Smile tour with a similar number of musicians and type of instruments and music played. But Smile had the best sound I had ever heard at a concert - you could look at every musician and hear them discernably in the mix but also hear the impact of the full band. The sound at this concert was so different. At first I blamed the venue sound, but Roy thinks they were going for this effect. He liked it a lot better than I did. I didn't like the singer's voice either.

The show seemed to end kind of early, only an hour. I was kind of happy about this. They came back for an encore and I found myself singing along. Wait a minute! I don't know any Polyphonic Spree songs. Scanning the lyrics through my head, this was Nirvana's Lithium. This was seriously weird. It sounded like a happy singalong. This is not supposed to be a happy song, but I was getting into it anyway. The lyrics to their other songs are such the opposite, happy positive things like Reach for the Sun. I didn't understand the juxtaposition lyrically or why they needed to make Nirvana sound happy.

Roy said he liked the whole presentation as well as the music. It was a spectacle. There were some parts he thought were predictable, but it didn't bother him. For me, musically, the sound needed more dynamics. They did put out a lot of energy and it seemed sincere, but it left me cold.

The encore section lasted as long as the main set. It also included the chorus of Ride Captain Ride. The show ended at 11:20pm. We walked home. Thankfully it wasn't as hot as it was when we walked there during the day.