I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: THE POLYPHONIC SPREE-The Beginning Stages of… (2001).

The Polyphonic Spree caused a lot of stir when they released this album.  There were like twenty of them, they all wore robes, and they sang choral chamber pop that was incredibly infectious.  Some people hated them outright.  And yet at least one of their songs was deemed worthy of being in a commercial (maybe that’s why people hated them).

It’s been almost ten years since the record came out and I have to say it still holds up really well.  In fact, given the trend of music over the decade, it almost seems like a precursor to bands like The Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene (the swelling orchestral bits, that is) and there’s the inevitable comparisons with The Flaming Lips.  Even Nick Hornby got into the act, naming one of his collections of essays for The Believer, The Polysyllabic Spree.

Unlike a lot of music that I’ve been enjoying lately, this album doesn’t have a lot of diversity within it.  That’s not to say that it’s bad, because what it does it does very well.  Symphonic pop.  Euphoric, majestic, swelling happiness.

You have to be very cynical not to be moved by some of these songs.  (Or really into death metal, anyway).

Of course, nobody needs the 36 minutes of synthesized swirls that constitute the last “song.”

[READ: August 12, 2010] “A New Examiner”

For those following the releases of excerpts from The Pale King, this is apparently the same fiction that was published in Issue #6 of The Lifted Brow (which I haven’t seen, so I don’t know if this is the same excerpt in toto).

This excerpt shows Lane Dean, Jr on one of his allotted breaks (2 fifteen-minutes a day).  He encounters two other men who are talking, although Lane has never seen them before.  The men are talking about a barbecue.  Well, specifically, it’s one man talking about a barbecue with the other man audibly nodding in agreement.

There’s very little to it, it’s just a scene, after all, but it is packed with the wonderful details and charm that DFW put into his work.

Lane Dean is awkwardly trying to join the conversation, but he is far more interested in the men themselves, particularly the one who is not talking.  The observation about his wrist and the fabric are spot on details.  And the concluding “joke” is really quite enjoyable.  It is a fully detailed and observed scene and makes me very excited about The Pale King.