Well, that was like nothing else I’ve ever seen before. Imagine, if you will, a cult. A cult consisting of 22 crazy, happy Americans, all wearing identical blue choir robes with a red electric flash across the front. They are led by a charismatic frontman who looks uncannily like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, and this cult’s mission in life is to sing bombastic, over-the-top sunny pop songs to the world and make everyone smile. A lot. They sing about the sun, and how much they love everyone, and the sun, and smiling, and the sun.

It all started with a town crier and his son, who rang the bell and proclaimed the coming of the Spree; and then, for the next hour and a half, we were treated to a show not unlike the sort of thing you’d experience if you dropped a tab of acid during a Pentecostal worship service. People in the audience were wearing choir robes and shook tambourines; the percussionist climbed up the rigging several times to bang his cymbal over the heads of the choir who danced as if undergoing some sort of shamanistic ritual. There was a theremin solo, and at the end of it, the theremin player asked the guitarist to marry him. I think he may actually have meant it, too.

There isn’t another band quite like The Polyphonic Spree, and I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything quite like their live show before. Awesome stuff.

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