The Polyphonic Spree
Everything's Bigger in Texas
2008-02-14
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Speaking with Julie Doyle, co-founder, -songwriter and -leader of sunshine orch-pop royalty The Polyphonic Spree, I got the impression that, despite her music’s exuberance, she’s not about to take any shit from anyone; that she’s the kind of person who fights for what she wants. The courteous, yet conservative tone of her voice has the hardened veneer of countless late-night dealings with uncooperative venues and shady booking agents; of adversarial long-distance phone calls with record labels and other music industry cogs; of organizing dozens of opposing schedules; and the tired repetition of answering yet another question about whether or not her band is actually a cult. No…no they’re not. They just wear matching outfits.
If Doyle has a sense of humor, it’s a guarded one: there’s little time for mirth with her long list of today’s to-dos. Between screen-printing about 3,000 custom Polyphonic Spree tour T-shirts and getting her home life situated before leaving on tour (she has four children with her husband Tim DeLaughter, lead singer and co-ringleader of the band), currently her smiles must appear less frequently than her furrowed brow. Handling the business end of a band can be a big headache, but emerging onstage that all melts away, replaced by endorphins and ecstatic choral voices. Though they’re not a cult, for many a Polyphonic Spree show is a religious experience.
The Polyphonic Spree’s story isn’t as cheery as its music. Born from the ashes of Texas jangle-pop rockers Tripping Daisy, whose guitarist Wes Berggren died of an overdose in 1999, the band began with singer/guitarist Tim DeLaughter’s desire to distance himself from the darkness by delving into the dayglow power of pop music, with a healthy bent for symphonic arrangements and all things having to do with the sun. With former Daisies Mark Pirro and Bryan Wakeland, along with Julie and a ragtag group of instrumentally minded friends and acquaintances, their demo-turned-first album The Beginning Stages of…The Polyphonic Spree was recorded in 10 days, and would soon launch the band into the public consciousness (thanks in part to a well-placed Volkswagon/iPod commercial and, later, a seemingly preordained spot on the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind soundtrack). Dressed in white robes and sporting an eight-member choir, the band’s numbers swelled to more than two-dozen. Taking to the road, and soon supporting David Bowie, The Polyphonic Spree gained a reputation for making audiences’ faces hurt from too much smiling. After being dropped from indie label 679 Recordings (citing lack of record sales), the band released Together We’re Heavy in 2004 with new label Hollywood Records…who subsequently dropped them during pre-production for their third and latest album, The Fragile Army.
The Fragile Army (TVT Records) shows the band in a new light, not previously captured on tape. As Julie Doyle explained, the album is a more accurate representation of how the band has evolved since its inception.
“Live, The Polyphonic Spree had taken on a whole different life,” she said. “It was very rock and high energy and was a totally different experience than what had been caught on the first two records. [With The Fragile Army] it just kinda felt like it was time, as far as a recording, to catch up; not just with the songwriting but the actual production and the sonic presentation to match what was happening in a live setting.”
With a new approach to writing and recording (which included its 24 or so members writing their parts almost on the spot, in whichever studio they could finagle some inexpensive time from), The Fragile Army asserts itself as the most dynamic Polyphonic Spree album yet. Though still wide-eyed with youthful voices and bouncing rhythmic pulses, these interludes are peppered with darker, short-of-breath moments, melancholy cautionary tales and a general sense of longing and urgency (“as Tim would say”).
Stepping away from her silk screens, Julie took a few minutes to expand on her and her husband’s story, field our questions, and dispel some myths about The Polyphonic Spree.
You’re printing your own tour T-shirts yourselves?
Yeah. We ordered a ton of vintage T-shirts; they’re wonky, so we’re having to figure out how to sell them — they say small medium and large, but when you look at them they’re on a different scale. It’s like tripling the work for us, because you look at every single one and go, “well this one would really sell as a medium…” We’ve been gathering vintage T-shirts from all over the world. They’re all slightly different, it should be cool.
I was reading that you recorded and edited a 52-minute documentary that will be included with The Fragile Army.
I documented it and produced it, and worked with a few other people, an editor who really helped bring it home. These days, it’s like every label…in order to compete with downloading and whatnot they’re like, “What can we throw out there?” Some people do some really interesting things, and sometimes it’s just crap… It’s to get people into the store to buy the record. So the idea was just sort of thrown out [to produce] 10 minutes of behind the scenes footage, but then we never talked about it again and we were out of town, and [the label] called on a Friday and said, “So hey, on Monday are you going to have that footage together?”
It’s a documentary but it’s also a little film. It started out as 15 minutes, then 20, then by day three it was, “Aww man, to really make it worthwhile you gotta get this in, gotta get that in…” It’s kind of like a puzzle. The beauty of it is, when I was shooting everything over that year, it wasn’t because we were going to go take this, chop it up and make it a documentary. I mean, I’ve been documenting this band for seven years, and Tim’s prior band, Tripping Daisy, I have nine years worth of footage. One day we’re thinking, after lots and lots of years and things, we’ll tell a bigger story and involve a lot of people…
…Like how Tripping Daisy evolved into Polyphonic Spree.
Yeah. Even though it’s 52 minutes, I think you get a lot out of it. It is just a glimpse into the big, big, big picture.
Polyphonic Spree has adopted new stage garb for the new album. Why was a military motif appropriate?
The outfit, it just evolved. We were never sure that we would always wear robes. The main thing is unifying the group—Polyphonic Spree will always present itself as a group that is unified, visually. That’s for sure. We went from the white robes to the colored robes, and this time around it was just one of those things, feeling the album during the political state that we’re in. It’s kind of impossible to not be affected and absorb some of that. We talked about it a little bit and when it came time we were ready to change and give our point of view on the album: total, real purpose. We were kind of over people bashing their heads going, “What is this? Is this a cult?” So we decided to answer the question ourselves and do what we wanted to do without being pigeonholed into one thing.
This is the kind of vibe around the record, the presentation and just kind of where we are with America and all the other countries that are in the mix. The Fragile Army is about all of us as a human race, being in such a fragile existence and trying to get over ourselves a little bit instead of getting so wrapped up in looking beyond. As a race on this earth, there are a lot more things to be thinking about besides power and the leaders, and each country trying to control the other. We should be thinking about the bigger picture.
So you’ve been expanding your scope. How did that affect Polyphonic Spree’s sound? How did it change how The Fragile Army came out?
I think when you’re creating something, whatever you’re taking in, your subconscious is going to channel through anything that you write; or sonically, how you want to hear something. Specifically, how did it affect the sound? I don’t know, maybe the fact that it sounds like a more urgent record, as Tim would say. It has an intensity about it that I think is the antithesis of our first and second record; just an energy and intensity in the sonic presentation and in the songwriting. It was a spontaneous record as well; everyone who performed on it kinda came in, learned a song at a time and was kind of quick to think on their feet and create parts or take direction. It’s just one of those things. No one in the band had heard the songs before they worked on them.
That’s the first time you guys have worked this way.
Exactly. And it was an experiment and it turned out great. We came in a section at a time and whatever had built on the foundation before you, you got to hear.
You brought up the robes earlier. Early on, people used to speculate that Polyphonic Spree was a cult. So with all those cult speculations I was wondering if you ever began to develop some sort of ideology as a response?
I can’t answer that.
No?
[Laughs] Not at this point.
Okay, next time then… So I have to say, The pAper chAse’s Now You Are One of Us is my favorite rock album of 2006.
Yeah, John [Congleton] is a genius.
I was wondering, because the pAper chAse vibe is so much darker and so much more terrifying than The Fragile Army—which has the most dark moments I’ve heard on a Polyphonic Spree album so far—why did you select John Congleton to produce Fragile Army? Why did you think he was the person to help realize your vision, especially after recording with someone like Jon Brion?
Just strong intuition. We’re all from Dallas; John Congleton’s from Dallas, Tim and I are from Dallas… Although we’d never hung out much, I think there was this sort of respect for each other. He was doing things that were sort of the antithesis of what the response was to what we were doing, exactly. Tim and I knew that we were going to do a rock record, and we ran into John one night right when we were about to start getting into that and we said, “Let’s do something.” He goes, “I’m here, let’s do it,” and we just stayed in touch over the next few months. We had to convince our record company that we knew what we wanted and that we wanted to work with John. He stuck it out with us; there was a little bit of a bumpy road there for a bit. The label kinda fell out of the game plan, but between ourselves and John we just kept moving forward like nothing ever happened. We didn’t even tell the band that the label had fallen out from underneath this, we just kept moving forward like, “We’re making this album. That’s all that matters. We just want to make a great record and we’re going to finish what we started.” We felt certain that when we totally got done that the record would find its place with someone and that’s exactly how it played out.
So you kept moving forward, recording The Fragile Army without a record label’s support?
The label was only with us the first 20 days. After that I guess they couldn’t see the big picture, or I don’t know, they kinda backed out. From that point forward, all the months that would come, most of the finances, we had to figure them out and find them ourselves. And John, he really stuck with us and we just kept making a record. Whatever studio would let us in, whoever would give us a good deal, we just kept moving and we never thought twice about it.
Can you tell me why you think Hollywood Records dropped out? You said they didn’t see the big picture…
We never asked them. I mean, when they decided not to stick with us on the project we just said okay and just kept going. We were a little angry about it for 24 hours, but to be completely honest, and not to diss or say anything negative about the label, it was kind of a load off our backs. All of that pressure was gone and we could move forward from that moment doing exactly what we wanted to do and make exactly what we wanted to make. If you feel that tension, that each side maybe isn’t seeing eye to eye, you end up with a compromised piece of art. I hate to hear records where I feel like an agreement was made between two opposing parties. I think this record sounds like it has a clear point of view, it knows what it is. I don’t know if that would have happened, or it may have been hell to get it there, so it was blessing in disguise, artistically.
I’d like to imagine the Polyphonic Spree in its dozen or so members hanging out together for social activities. After all, you might be the only current American band that can form its own sports league. What do you all do together besides fill up tour busses, stages and rehearsal rooms?
Well, to be completely honest, we created a party at our record store, Good Records, that we’re gonna do here shortly, and before it’s open to the public it is sort of a private party for just our band to hang out, celebrate, listen to the record… When we’re on the road, that is the time when we’re mostly all together. There are a lot of subgroups, and there is the big group and everybody gets along; everybody has someone within the group that they can hang with. It’s amazing because it’s so many different walks of life, and also the age goes from 20 up to 41. Somehow it really does function as somewhat of a family out there, you know, the big American dysfunctional family, only it is totally functional. But at home, to be honest with you, we are so busy. Tim’s scoring another film right now, we have four kids; there’s so much going on, everyone’s got a lot happening in their lives. It’s not like everybody’s trying to get away from each other, but when you start spending a lot of time on the road, that is your life. That is your social life, and it’s fantastic in this group because it makes your social life awesome. When you’re on the road you don’t feel separate, like this is my work, and then my social life is at home. It’s like your whole world is traveling together and it’s awesome.
Julie, do you have a favorite moment from recording The Fragile Army?
Yes I do. It’s in the documentary. It’s a song that we weren’t going to do. We ended up approaching it with a new approach, and something really cool happened. Whether it’s other people’s favorite song or not doesn’t really matter; it’s just sort of the struggle and the strife that happened to get to a certain point where everyone was feeling really good about something that we didn’t know was going to happen. And it was an awesome moment, and it was a moment where I saw Tim most vulnerable and more lost than I’ve ever seen him in a recording, and within an hour coming around and embracing something that he didn’t know he had in him and doing an amazing performance. And it was caught on the spot with some of the scratch vocals, and we left it for the album.
If Doyle has a sense of humor, it’s a guarded one: there’s little time for mirth with her long list of today’s to-dos. Between screen-printing about 3,000 custom Polyphonic Spree tour T-shirts and getting her home life situated before leaving on tour (she has four children with her husband Tim DeLaughter, lead singer and co-ringleader of the band), currently her smiles must appear less frequently than her furrowed brow. Handling the business end of a band can be a big headache, but emerging onstage that all melts away, replaced by endorphins and ecstatic choral voices. Though they’re not a cult, for many a Polyphonic Spree show is a religious experience.
The Polyphonic Spree’s story isn’t as cheery as its music. Born from the ashes of Texas jangle-pop rockers Tripping Daisy, whose guitarist Wes Berggren died of an overdose in 1999, the band began with singer/guitarist Tim DeLaughter’s desire to distance himself from the darkness by delving into the dayglow power of pop music, with a healthy bent for symphonic arrangements and all things having to do with the sun. With former Daisies Mark Pirro and Bryan Wakeland, along with Julie and a ragtag group of instrumentally minded friends and acquaintances, their demo-turned-first album The Beginning Stages of…The Polyphonic Spree was recorded in 10 days, and would soon launch the band into the public consciousness (thanks in part to a well-placed Volkswagon/iPod commercial and, later, a seemingly preordained spot on the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind soundtrack). Dressed in white robes and sporting an eight-member choir, the band’s numbers swelled to more than two-dozen. Taking to the road, and soon supporting David Bowie, The Polyphonic Spree gained a reputation for making audiences’ faces hurt from too much smiling. After being dropped from indie label 679 Recordings (citing lack of record sales), the band released Together We’re Heavy in 2004 with new label Hollywood Records…who subsequently dropped them during pre-production for their third and latest album, The Fragile Army.
The Fragile Army (TVT Records) shows the band in a new light, not previously captured on tape. As Julie Doyle explained, the album is a more accurate representation of how the band has evolved since its inception.
“Live, The Polyphonic Spree had taken on a whole different life,” she said. “It was very rock and high energy and was a totally different experience than what had been caught on the first two records. [With The Fragile Army] it just kinda felt like it was time, as far as a recording, to catch up; not just with the songwriting but the actual production and the sonic presentation to match what was happening in a live setting.”
With a new approach to writing and recording (which included its 24 or so members writing their parts almost on the spot, in whichever studio they could finagle some inexpensive time from), The Fragile Army asserts itself as the most dynamic Polyphonic Spree album yet. Though still wide-eyed with youthful voices and bouncing rhythmic pulses, these interludes are peppered with darker, short-of-breath moments, melancholy cautionary tales and a general sense of longing and urgency (“as Tim would say”).
Stepping away from her silk screens, Julie took a few minutes to expand on her and her husband’s story, field our questions, and dispel some myths about The Polyphonic Spree.
You’re printing your own tour T-shirts yourselves?
Yeah. We ordered a ton of vintage T-shirts; they’re wonky, so we’re having to figure out how to sell them — they say small medium and large, but when you look at them they’re on a different scale. It’s like tripling the work for us, because you look at every single one and go, “well this one would really sell as a medium…” We’ve been gathering vintage T-shirts from all over the world. They’re all slightly different, it should be cool.
I was reading that you recorded and edited a 52-minute documentary that will be included with The Fragile Army.
I documented it and produced it, and worked with a few other people, an editor who really helped bring it home. These days, it’s like every label…in order to compete with downloading and whatnot they’re like, “What can we throw out there?” Some people do some really interesting things, and sometimes it’s just crap… It’s to get people into the store to buy the record. So the idea was just sort of thrown out [to produce] 10 minutes of behind the scenes footage, but then we never talked about it again and we were out of town, and [the label] called on a Friday and said, “So hey, on Monday are you going to have that footage together?”
It’s a documentary but it’s also a little film. It started out as 15 minutes, then 20, then by day three it was, “Aww man, to really make it worthwhile you gotta get this in, gotta get that in…” It’s kind of like a puzzle. The beauty of it is, when I was shooting everything over that year, it wasn’t because we were going to go take this, chop it up and make it a documentary. I mean, I’ve been documenting this band for seven years, and Tim’s prior band, Tripping Daisy, I have nine years worth of footage. One day we’re thinking, after lots and lots of years and things, we’ll tell a bigger story and involve a lot of people…
…Like how Tripping Daisy evolved into Polyphonic Spree.
Yeah. Even though it’s 52 minutes, I think you get a lot out of it. It is just a glimpse into the big, big, big picture.
Polyphonic Spree has adopted new stage garb for the new album. Why was a military motif appropriate?
The outfit, it just evolved. We were never sure that we would always wear robes. The main thing is unifying the group—Polyphonic Spree will always present itself as a group that is unified, visually. That’s for sure. We went from the white robes to the colored robes, and this time around it was just one of those things, feeling the album during the political state that we’re in. It’s kind of impossible to not be affected and absorb some of that. We talked about it a little bit and when it came time we were ready to change and give our point of view on the album: total, real purpose. We were kind of over people bashing their heads going, “What is this? Is this a cult?” So we decided to answer the question ourselves and do what we wanted to do without being pigeonholed into one thing.
This is the kind of vibe around the record, the presentation and just kind of where we are with America and all the other countries that are in the mix. The Fragile Army is about all of us as a human race, being in such a fragile existence and trying to get over ourselves a little bit instead of getting so wrapped up in looking beyond. As a race on this earth, there are a lot more things to be thinking about besides power and the leaders, and each country trying to control the other. We should be thinking about the bigger picture.
So you’ve been expanding your scope. How did that affect Polyphonic Spree’s sound? How did it change how The Fragile Army came out?
I think when you’re creating something, whatever you’re taking in, your subconscious is going to channel through anything that you write; or sonically, how you want to hear something. Specifically, how did it affect the sound? I don’t know, maybe the fact that it sounds like a more urgent record, as Tim would say. It has an intensity about it that I think is the antithesis of our first and second record; just an energy and intensity in the sonic presentation and in the songwriting. It was a spontaneous record as well; everyone who performed on it kinda came in, learned a song at a time and was kind of quick to think on their feet and create parts or take direction. It’s just one of those things. No one in the band had heard the songs before they worked on them.
That’s the first time you guys have worked this way.
Exactly. And it was an experiment and it turned out great. We came in a section at a time and whatever had built on the foundation before you, you got to hear.
You brought up the robes earlier. Early on, people used to speculate that Polyphonic Spree was a cult. So with all those cult speculations I was wondering if you ever began to develop some sort of ideology as a response?
I can’t answer that.
No?
[Laughs] Not at this point.
Okay, next time then… So I have to say, The pAper chAse’s Now You Are One of Us is my favorite rock album of 2006.
Yeah, John [Congleton] is a genius.
I was wondering, because the pAper chAse vibe is so much darker and so much more terrifying than The Fragile Army—which has the most dark moments I’ve heard on a Polyphonic Spree album so far—why did you select John Congleton to produce Fragile Army? Why did you think he was the person to help realize your vision, especially after recording with someone like Jon Brion?
Just strong intuition. We’re all from Dallas; John Congleton’s from Dallas, Tim and I are from Dallas… Although we’d never hung out much, I think there was this sort of respect for each other. He was doing things that were sort of the antithesis of what the response was to what we were doing, exactly. Tim and I knew that we were going to do a rock record, and we ran into John one night right when we were about to start getting into that and we said, “Let’s do something.” He goes, “I’m here, let’s do it,” and we just stayed in touch over the next few months. We had to convince our record company that we knew what we wanted and that we wanted to work with John. He stuck it out with us; there was a little bit of a bumpy road there for a bit. The label kinda fell out of the game plan, but between ourselves and John we just kept moving forward like nothing ever happened. We didn’t even tell the band that the label had fallen out from underneath this, we just kept moving forward like, “We’re making this album. That’s all that matters. We just want to make a great record and we’re going to finish what we started.” We felt certain that when we totally got done that the record would find its place with someone and that’s exactly how it played out.
So you kept moving forward, recording The Fragile Army without a record label’s support?
The label was only with us the first 20 days. After that I guess they couldn’t see the big picture, or I don’t know, they kinda backed out. From that point forward, all the months that would come, most of the finances, we had to figure them out and find them ourselves. And John, he really stuck with us and we just kept making a record. Whatever studio would let us in, whoever would give us a good deal, we just kept moving and we never thought twice about it.
Can you tell me why you think Hollywood Records dropped out? You said they didn’t see the big picture…
We never asked them. I mean, when they decided not to stick with us on the project we just said okay and just kept going. We were a little angry about it for 24 hours, but to be completely honest, and not to diss or say anything negative about the label, it was kind of a load off our backs. All of that pressure was gone and we could move forward from that moment doing exactly what we wanted to do and make exactly what we wanted to make. If you feel that tension, that each side maybe isn’t seeing eye to eye, you end up with a compromised piece of art. I hate to hear records where I feel like an agreement was made between two opposing parties. I think this record sounds like it has a clear point of view, it knows what it is. I don’t know if that would have happened, or it may have been hell to get it there, so it was blessing in disguise, artistically.
I’d like to imagine the Polyphonic Spree in its dozen or so members hanging out together for social activities. After all, you might be the only current American band that can form its own sports league. What do you all do together besides fill up tour busses, stages and rehearsal rooms?
Well, to be completely honest, we created a party at our record store, Good Records, that we’re gonna do here shortly, and before it’s open to the public it is sort of a private party for just our band to hang out, celebrate, listen to the record… When we’re on the road, that is the time when we’re mostly all together. There are a lot of subgroups, and there is the big group and everybody gets along; everybody has someone within the group that they can hang with. It’s amazing because it’s so many different walks of life, and also the age goes from 20 up to 41. Somehow it really does function as somewhat of a family out there, you know, the big American dysfunctional family, only it is totally functional. But at home, to be honest with you, we are so busy. Tim’s scoring another film right now, we have four kids; there’s so much going on, everyone’s got a lot happening in their lives. It’s not like everybody’s trying to get away from each other, but when you start spending a lot of time on the road, that is your life. That is your social life, and it’s fantastic in this group because it makes your social life awesome. When you’re on the road you don’t feel separate, like this is my work, and then my social life is at home. It’s like your whole world is traveling together and it’s awesome.
Julie, do you have a favorite moment from recording The Fragile Army?
Yes I do. It’s in the documentary. It’s a song that we weren’t going to do. We ended up approaching it with a new approach, and something really cool happened. Whether it’s other people’s favorite song or not doesn’t really matter; it’s just sort of the struggle and the strife that happened to get to a certain point where everyone was feeling really good about something that we didn’t know was going to happen. And it was an awesome moment, and it was a moment where I saw Tim most vulnerable and more lost than I’ve ever seen him in a recording, and within an hour coming around and embracing something that he didn’t know he had in him and doing an amazing performance. And it was caught on the spot with some of the scratch vocals, and we left it for the album.
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