Hippies raise their voices

Not since the excess of Geoff Love and his Orchestra has a band as gloriously kitsch as The Polyphonic Spree had such a high profile.

When the 70s ended overblown neo-classical bands and prog monsters blew their last 20-minute farts and the world forgot about big, big pop forever.

Or so it seemed. For now one Texan has brought Pomp Pop back from extinction with a 24-piece choir and accompanying broken Beatles-like band.

The ensemble began in Tim Delaughter's imagination two and a half years ago where a choral pop group had been resident for some years already.

He was in an alternative four-piece band at the time, called Tripping Daisy, which he was pushing to its limits.

"We were branching out as much as we could with the amount of people we had and that shows on our last record," he said this week.

He talked of his dream to his friend and now manager of The Polyphonic Spree, Chris Penn, who was intrigued enough to book him into a recording studio.

Tim had two weeks notice to get as many desert hippies into one place to record the first Polyphonic Spree album, The Beginning Stages of... The results sound like nine versions of Hey Jude sung by a bunch of Hari Krishnas followed by an excruciatingly pretentious exercise in void filling - a 36-minute track consisting of a few electronic tones repeated over and over again. "Hey Jude is kind of like a basic format song to us," said Delaughter this week. "It's all about progressions between highs and lows. "It's all in the journey for me." The band has used the Beatles' track as their intro music at gigs which is played as the enormo-band file onto stage. One of the most interesting things about next month's Welsh gig is likely to be how they manage to cram onto the stage in Cardiff University's Great Hall. Given that Badly Drawn Boy's largish band seemed a little cramped last month, the chances are Tim Delaughter's mass band are going to feel the venue pinch a little. And bearing in mind they are on tour with three other bands, and they're not even the headline act, it's going to be a bit cramped backstage too. "It can get pretty hairy on the road," admitted Tim. "There's laughter and tears." Polyphonic Spree's appearance on the NME Showcase tour will be their second UK trawl of universities but their first appearance in Wales. The gig is much anticipated by many, most of whom want to hear what the choir sounds like, as on the album they're a bit quiet. Despite the presence of 24 amateur singers belting out Tim's songs the vocal presence is no greater than that of the Beach Boys, probably less. There is little formal orchestration with most of the arrangements coming from improvisations in the studio. For the opening track of the album, Have a Day, which has also been released as a single, Tim got everyone in one room plus friends and family and let rip. "We let the natural harmonies come," he explained. "So it's not orchestrated in that sense. "People find comfortable highs and lows which we stick with." The reason the choir might seem absent from the recording is the hasty way it was recorded "The album is just a demo," said Tim, who managed its recording over just three days. "And we've already been working on the second album for 18 weeks.

"We just recorded the first one to get gigs but then we found people wanted a record." The second was almost done earlier this week and will be out later this year.

Tim promises a much bigger affair: "We have the sonic capabilities now. The first album had something magical which we hit on. But for the second we have the technology. "There are major stories on it - it's a bit like a musical, which it might indeed become one day."

People said The Polyphonic Spree wouldn't even bust out of Texas let alone tour the world and release an album and a few singles.

Tim's achievement is undeniable, even if the band's greatest achievement to date is to pose for some pretty fantastic photographs, taken in Scotland (see above).

And while 70s prog bands such Popol Vuh may have made genuine choral masterpieces, which The Polyphonic Spree might do one day, they never took them on the road.

Essentially a gaggle of hippies, the 30-plus gang has had to stick together and muck in to tour their mini prog musicals.

"We don't have any room for any prima donnas," said Tim. "And we are not doing this for the love of money. We have to be very frugal to keep this band going.

"And I would like to keep it going until everybody in the world has heard The Polyphonic Spree - and there're a lot of people out there who haven't heard us yet."

The Polyphonic Spree play Cardiff University on Saturday, February 8, with The Datsuns, Interpol and The Thrills.