Blast from the Past

I found a document on my old computer with my complete review of Lollapalooza 2007, which I wrote up for a now-defunct British website called RealBuzz. It's fun going through old reviews, not only because I really sucked as a writer but because I actually can feel the energy of the festival like I'm there all over again.

I enjoyed this memory:

The Polyphonic Spree - 1:45 P.M. - Bud Light Stage

More a spectacle than a concert, The Polyphonic Spree were this year's equivalent to last year's The Flaming Lips. Complete with a three-woman choir, every entrancing instrument imaginable, and quite a stage show, they sounded like a chipper version of a Sufjan Stevens album. They had members of the audience singing echoes, craning their necks to see over the colassal crowd, and dancing interpretively. Horns blasted, trombones sounded, a keyboard clanged, a harp rang, a cello resounded, a flute fluttered, and the glockenspiel reverberated. Mid-performance, half the band began tap dancing. I felt like I was an actor in a really great alien movie, perhaps with the music as the theme song to my abduction. (Immediately after I wrote the previous sentence, frontman Tim DeLaughter belted, "When we're human, we're always guessing," leading me to believe I might not have been that far off on the whole outer space theme they had going.) They closed with the most gleeful version of Nirvana's "Lithium" I've ever heard - if you didn't listen to the lyrics, it might as well have been sung by The Monkees.