Wild And Free

After four full-lengths, as well as notable recent soundtrack singles (an Emmy nomination for theme music for United States Of Tara), killer mini musicals (The Rocky Horror Picture Show at Splendour In The Grass) and live performances that are all-inclusive, The Polyphonic Spree return with Yes, It's True, a record that's more contemplative, with some beautiful, unexpectedly quiet moments. Songwriter and ringleader Tim DeLaughter admits it was hard holding his musicians back, with tracks like the finale, Battlefield, delivered with a particularly small sound for such a big group.

“In all fairness it's me wanting to have everyone have their time to shine,” DeLaughter says of the group's now characteristic epic sound, “and it's so difficult, you know, to be restraining anybody. Because if they're on stage they're in the band and they should be playing the song, so that's been something we've been having to work through for years, to be comfortable not playing. But that was purposeful for Battlefield to be stripped down like that, also with another track on the album, Golden. These are elements that this band has always had, but it's always been me saying 'If you want to play on this part, go ahead', and then it's been, sometimes, 'I wish we could have pulled that back'. So this time it's like 'No, you're just not going to play on that', and it is what it is.”

From the description above it seems that DeLaughter worries about the pressure of such a large endeavour, but he also thrives on it. Responsible for well over a football team's worth of musicians at any given time, he's explored other options, but there's something about the thrill of a group. Speaking with a gorgeous Texan drawl, he recounts when the community of music-making hit him. “I've got a memory of me, like probably in kindergarten, I'm just realising this now as we're talking, I was singing this song and I was getting all these other kids to follow me around and sing the song too. I've always had that 'Come on, let's go do this together'. And then I have this big band and we get the audience together, getting people to get down and get back up and before you know it everyone just experiences it together… I drove my mum crazy and my teachers – they wanted to kill me – but I made it through,” he says, laughing.

During the last few years DeLaughter did try his first solo gig, a support for Jon Anderson from Yes, no less. “I've never performed by myself, because that idea just petrifies me. But I did it and it was one of the most nerve wrecking experiences I've ever had. I got really high anxiety, I was forgetting my chords and my lyrics… it was just me and an acoustic guitar. Once I got there it was like, 'Holy shit, this is not me', and I realised how much I really do enjoy having a lot of people around me. That's what I love about Polyphonic Spree – that energy that everyone brings together, that I can't. I do like writing songs and I write all of these songs in solitude, and I do that experience of writing and recording songs in that way, but when I go to perform I think I'm best around a lot of folks. I think that's why I'm more engaging with the audience, because I'm trying to get them up there with me.”

It might seem strange, then, that he admits that Yes, It's True actually started as a solo project, or at least as a plan to write for himself and maybe something un-Spree. “In that period [since last album The Fragile Army] I started writing and realised, 'Wait, these are solo songs, this is going to be a solo record', and I didn't have a record deal at the time, I didn't have any pressure for anybody telling me to go do this or that, I started writing the songs and I was like 'I can hear this going on' and 'I want to record it like this', and all of a sudden it started getting further and further away from Polyphonic Spree. I kept writing and rehearsing and just starting to have these late night jams where we'd just invite people over and just be going to 5am and just really exploring, having a lot of fun,” DeLaughter begins. 

He continues to explain how the few months, then years (as well as other bits and pieces for all concerned) gave more than enough material for a variety of projects. DeLaughter's swag of songs did include enough for his jolly troupe, so after a little convincing he went to the band's fans to make it happen. “We made the video for Kickstarter, and then got the money for that and went and made that record. And that's what I like about this record, it showcases such a variety of songwriting and the variety of this band which has never really been done before. We've got our 'sound', that we created and people know as Polyphonic Spree, but there's a wide variety of sonics here that [are] not normally displayed. You make a body of work because you need to go and make a record – usually sounds that way globally – but for this one it goes all over the place, up and down sonically, but it works under this record. Which is really hard to do without it sounding really Frankenstein-y, you know? But I think that's the real beauty of this record is that it has so much variety but it's cut from the same cloth and I think that's super lucky, because it could have been the opposite.”