22.10, Radio 1 Stage

THE POLYPHONIC SPREE are late – presumably they couldn’t all fit on the same tourbus, and so have had to come in convoy. When they do arrive, their entrance is as theatrically grand as they come – announced in verse by a town crier complete with red uniform, clanging bell and shouts of “Oh yay, oh yay!” They look and sound like The Flaming Lips would if they dropped the existential reflections for demented cheeriness and went on a recruitment drive in a mental asylum. At the centre of it all stands Tim DeLaughter, conductor of the whole crazed orchestra. For about fifteen minutes, or at least the combined duration of opening salvo ‘Hanging Around’ and ‘It’s The Sun’, I’m swept up in it all, utterly enraptured and quite probably capable of being convinced at the drop of a hat that it’d be a great idea to join them in their heavily-defended walled mountain commune to take part in their flower-worshipping, Prozac orgies and ritual suicide activities. But then gradually their attraction starts to wane, the brainwashing drugs begin to lose effect and as ever I find myself called back over to the dark side…