Paperjam

The Polyphonic Spree at the Astoria

Gigs // Jim // 30th September 2007

At certain point in life you realise that you have, for better or worse, reached the point at which your behaviour, demeanour and general appearance engender you with a fairly specific persona and reputation.

One day you will realise that you are perceived as a pushy, ambitious, power-dressing, social climber due to your dedication to your career in advertising and your frightening obsession with expensive footwear. You might even be considered a dictatorial, passive/aggressive, with severe menstrual envy and crippling oedipal issues, just because you are a local government councillor in a bad suit.

Personally, I am usually summed up by other people using a mixture of the words “Scruffy”, “Miserable”, “Cynical” and now and again, “Amusing”. Which to be honest I can sort of understand. The genesis of my joyless, sarcastic vagrant persona can’t be traced to my difficult lonely adolescence years, the nomadic trail of failed relationships, not even the three years living in Stoke-On-Trent or my complete inability to ever get Channel 5.

No - I am fairly sure that the impression that I generally give off can be attributed to one particular source: Travelling by train.

It’s a lesson I learned early in life, you are sat there reading a book or staring into space and someone sits down near you, a conversation starts. They seem ok, if a little strange; the conversation develops a little “Oh good” you think, “this will help to pass the time.” Then suddenly your new travelling companion will come out with something along the lines of, “yeah, but the whole place went downhill when the blacks started moving in…” or “... that’s when I realised that Jesus wanted me to travel on trains spreading the word”, maybe even “I am a fan of Aston Villa”. Congratulations, you’ve hooked yourself a nutter.

So now I sit on the train looking like I’ve slept in my clothes (which I probably have), headphones in, pretentious novel at chin level and limit any interaction with my fellow passengers to either absolutely ignoring them, or a disdainful, quizzical glance which I am hoping communicates “Do you really want to sit there?”, along with “Don’t bother, I’m less interested in anything you have to say than I am in understanding the actual difference between organic and inorganic chemistry”.

Of course the problem with this approach is that it means that you might not get talking to someone genuinely interesting. Possibly even someone so interesting that you would consider sleeping with them. This is theoretically possible but a quick calculation based on 25 years experience of train journeys reveals that the ratio of nutters to normal people on a train is at least 40:1 and the ratio of nutters to desirable single female passengers who are impressed by scruffy, surly men reading pretentious novels must be somewhere near 1,000,000:1. The odds are against it.

Anyway, I am getting onto a train at Exeter, it has arrived early and I’m relieved to see that there are plenty of free seats. I dive in, get the ipod fired up with a bit of the Polyphonic Spree to get me in the mood for later and get started on Spook Country by William Gibson.

The train gradually fills up and fairly soon there are only a few seats left. My miserable tramp act is working nicely, only one person even considers sitting next to me – a bloke in a nicely ironed rugby shirt, which is tucked into a pair of tight bright blue jeans. He says something, I glance upwards wishing I could wrinkle my forehead to look even more put out. Removing one earphone as though it is the most inconvenient thing I have ever done in my life, I sneer “What was that mate?” as though he has just asked me if he can hire my sister for the evening.

He decides that perching next to the Snoop Dogg act-a-like in the Raiders jersey a few seats away is probably going to be more fun. They look like a comedy sketch waiting to happen.

Nice - the train is going in a minute I can spread myself across the seats and give my arse a bit of room to breathe. Oh no, here comes the one thing that is going to crack my sullen resolve, the absolute, guaranteed, guilt-inducing nemesis of the sulky train ignorer. It’s a little old lady struggling with her suitcase. She shudders up, looking scared – probably because I’ve already discarded the headphones and I’m having a crack at looking friendly. “Yes, of course you can sit there. Oooh that bag looks heavy, shall I put it in the luggage rack for you?” I yell assuming that she is probably deaf as a post. “No problem at all” I re-assure her as she is already telling me something about her grandkids while I am wedging her stuff into the luggage space. Turning to sit down I notice rugby boy staring in a surprised manner, I give him a surly glance and he looks away - straight at Snoop, who glares at him with something between hatred and sexual longing. Rugby boy resigns himself to looking at the floor.

The train pulls away, just as I am about to pop the ipod back on, the old dear starts chuntering about what she’s been up to in Exeter. I grimace internally and prepare myself for a couple of hours of understanding nods and saying “Really?” every few minutes.

Ten minutes later, she is telling me some amazing stories about her life as a medical student in Exeter during the war, being in the cathedral when it was bombed, seeing a figure praying at the altar sheathed in flame. Blimey. “You should write all this down,” I say, actually meaning it, before asking her once again to take me through the exact difference between organic and inorganic chemistry.

We continue talking for a while and then I notice, as I am ploughing into an extremely sanitised version of one of my cleanest anecdotes, that my companion is both bored shitless and probably quite irritated by me. She has got a book out and is trying to start reading it. I have become the train nutter. Shame and embarrassment shoots through me like a flame through petrol soaked tissue paper. I scramble my book out and get reading – blown out by a septuagenarian, well it was bound to happen at some point, I was sort of hoping that it would happen when I was in my seventies though.

Logistics demand that I am back in favour when we get to the old lady’s stop though, I carry her stuff off the train for her. “Goodbye” she says, pauses then adds soberly “and good luck”, a lifetime of experience letting me know that she thinks I need it. I nearly fail to get back on the train in time but scramble in as the door is closing. Snoop and rugby boy seem to be having some kind of frenzied texting competition. I phone Max but the signal is shocking and he is at work, he’ll catch me later.

Into Paddington and a tube into town to go book and cd shopping, Max calls, we are meeting at a pub later on, super. I wonder exactly how late he’ll be. A man in a funny hat is walking down the road towards me, it is the comedian Mark Steel, he looks at me in a disdainful sort of “yeah, I know you’ve spotted me, but I’m a celebrity so don’t talk to me or anything” sort of way. I try to commit this look to memory for future use on public transport, then I retort with a glance, which I am hoping says “Well, if you weren’t wearing the stupid fucking hat I wouldn’t have noticed you in the first place”.

Having just read the excellent Under The Frog I grab two more Tibor Fischer books and then head to the flicks. The Odeon on Panton street is one of my favourite places to watch films, there is never anyone there, it is tiny and the screening rooms are properly pitch-black dark. I’ve come to watch Eagle Vs Shark, it is easily one of the quirkiest films I have ever seen but my usual cynicism is slightly blunted today and I enjoy it, helped by the fact that it really is very funny in parts. It has the best fight scene I have ever witnessed involving a Samoan in a wheelchair and a deluded nerd with Nunchucks.

Stumble out of the dark and with some time to kill go and play games in the arcade in the Trocadero, acutely aware that I probably look like a complete nonce. Stroll up to the Tottenham pub to meet Max and his mates, I’m expecting him to be late so I grab a pint, manage to get a seat and start reading the first short story in Don’t Read This Book If You’re Stupid. It is about a bitter man called Jim who works in the IT industry and in the opening pages mentions several part of central London that I have just strolled through. Discomforting.

Max arrives and it transpires that I have been sat next to a mate of his for some time as we both waited. We grab some drinks and I confidently predict that the band won’t be on for ages. The others aren’t so sure so we bundle down to the Astoria just after eight. Just as well as The Polyphonic Spree are already on stage, ploughing through Running Away clad in what appear to be gothic SS uniforms, as opposed to the Waco compound white robes they are known for (well in my head they are).

Drinks are procured and we politely barge our way more or less to the front. The Spree are in full flight banging through more tracks off their new album. This bands output is almost illegally pleasant, positive and happy, I should absolutely fucking hate it, but they have something irresistible about them and in the flesh this effect is magnified ten fold. In a process that started on the train earlier it seems my standard cynical outlook has been completely eroded - it’s nice to take a break now and again. In a short pause I’m telling Max that my favourite song off the new Album is Younger Yesterday, which they helpfully start playing almost immediately.

As an act it’s all pretty big, two drummers, some brass, some strings, guitars, flute and some geezer on a harp. At the back there is a chorus of six very lovely ladies and the whole thing is fronted by the maniacally enthusiastic Tim DeLaughter, a man so relentlessly positive you could probably use him to charge batteries. His stage persona is akin to Wayne Coyne with a bigger messianic complex – not necessarily a bad thing.

Dash down to the tribute to third world hygiene otherwise known as the Astoria toilets, the bloke sat on the stool with the aftershave is looking particularly fucked off tonight, but on the plus side he does seem to be conducting some sort of business via three different mobile phones so at least he’s not bored. Get back just as the flute is tooting out the start of the classic Soldier Girl, time for some leaping about the place and grinning like fools. Ace.

We get It’s The Sun off the first album and things take a turn for the prog with all manner of stage theatrics going on. More drinks and I’m fairly sure that I am in deep spiritual love with the entire choir but especially the one on the left, or maybe the one at the back. I glance round and notice that everyone in the balcony is up and jumping around too, which I’ve not seen at a gig since, well, ever really. The whole affair is getting a bit sweaty, a crowd surfer or two have gone over and the bouncers are handing out water.

They finish off with The Championship, we’ve got more beer, the crowd are now really into it and confetti rains down from the roof. It’s the whole Flaming Lips vibe , but with a band that you could get two footy teams out of. The song segues into the triumphant outro refrain which sees the band troop off one at a time leaving the choir and the harp bloke. The ladies disappear one at a time, I nearly cry, one day I was going to marry that girl. Harp bloke does one leaving the crowd calling for the band to get back out.

They reappear on the balcony clad now in the trademark white robes and stream through the crowd back to the front of the stage we cheer them past and clap them on the back, then the choir ladies appear through the throng and I awkwardly look at the floor – regressed to adolescence by alcohol, sweatiness and the knowledge that I have a load of confetti stuck to me.

TPS are all back on stage, where is DeLaughter? is he too good to mix it with the proles? Au contraire, his swinging boot narrowly clearing Max’s scalp indicates that he has taken the crowd surfing route back for the encore. A this point things go fairly crazy as they start playing a cover of Lithium, things then go properly crazy when the chorus kicks in and we indulge in what I imagine the NME will probably describe as “incredibly rowdy moshing”.

Polyphonic Spree: Positive, rowdy

Things go on longer than the management of the Astoria want it to, the band staying on to do one last Tripping Daisy song. The Polyphonic Spree sticking it to the man, but then probably giving him a big hug afterwards. They leave looking happier than I would if say, Coventry City were to beat Man Utd soundly at Old Trafford.

Still quite early so we re-convene back at the pub for more drinks and post match analysis of the euphoric Polyphonic Spree live experience. Taxi back to Max’s flat and fall into a drunken sleep wondering what the next day will hold. At a rough guess it will involve feeling fairly ill, walking miles because of a tube strike, reading a lot, being patronised at the ICA, seeing Peter Snow in Green Park and having drinks with an executive city type while a shit pub quiz goes on in the background. Sounds like it should be a good day, I’m looking forward to it.

Hey! It's the links!

Proper gig review

On the There goes The Fear web site, loads of photos and barely any mention of train travel.

The Polyphonic Spree

Official web site

The NME review

Err, the NME review