It's odd for me to write about The Polyphonic Spree when I am not concurrently in my "Polyphonic Spree Season". I mean that I love the Spree, they're right under Eels on my list of "music I love", you see, but that I only really listen to them when I am about to see them live, and for about a month after I have seen them live.

The Polyphonic Spree is so unique within my collection, though over all, musically, they are similar, because Tim DeLaughter ("De-lah-ter") and gang (all 20+ of them) don't write songs about break ups and endless sorrow. Or maybe they do and it's so obtuse I'd never be able to figure it out! I don't know, I don't care, girls just wanna have fun, snakes on a robotic monolithic palsied marsupial, etc.

This album is a bit of a breakthrough for them because out of three albums this is the first one to sound somewhat genuinely edgy, like there is a hint of darkness in there somewhere, but it's all still wrapped in the type of language that makes you want to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps and march out into the day (and suck a bunch of cock like a real trooper, not that that is what I do for a living, I just mean, if whores and professional working faggots [and I use that term kindly, as one of my sisters was gay, once upon a time in mexico and now isn't, and that totally gives me the right] listened to this, they would be inspired to take it like a champ, is all i'm sayin).

This song is kind of like that. It starts off all slow and kind of moody and as (you) the song becomes more "comfortable" with the situation of the song (loneliness and the conflict of maybe revealing to someone something that you shouldn't and general life and--oh, fuck, it's about everything) the mood picks up and before you know it you're singing the same sad lyrics but you're rocking out to them.

It's perfect.

I've seen the Spree five times now (at least one every year since 2004, except they never came around in 2008 and that sucked). I used to drive up from San Diego to see them play in Los Angeles. Two years ago, the second to last time they were here (they were here a month or two after I saw them and I didn't go because I am silly), I saw them in Los Angeles and then, two days later, drove to San Diego (w/ Nick, who saw them in LA with me, and two other friends) to see them again. At the San Diego show I experienced the gayest but most awesomest moment ever when Tim DeLaughter came down off of the stage and embraced me while everyone was singing the song. I can't even remember what song it was now, but it was like getting hugged by Jesus or Thom Yorke or Billy Corgan or Nikki Sixx and there were all these people around to witness it. No one can ever say you were bluffing.

If I have the money next time they come around I am totally taking a car load of people with me to San Francisco to see them, before hitting Los Angeles and San Diego. It will be legendary, to quote Barney Stinson.

Author's Note Hi, what's goin' on?