BECAUSE THE SILVER CLOUD HAS TO HAVE A DARK LINING?:

The Clouds Poke Through the Sun (BRET MCCABE, May 9, 2007, NY Sun)

Indie rock's most incorrigibly happy band may have finally found something to frown about. When the 20-plus-member rock orchestra and choir the Polyphonic Spree invades the Manhattan Center's Grand Ballroom on Friday, gone will be the members' trademark flowing gospel robes and the band's defiantly upbeat musical sunshine, which owes as much to "Jesus Christ Superstar" and "The Electric Company" as it does to ELO, Wings, and the Beach Boys. In their place will be new uniforms — Chinese Cultural Revolution-like plain black work suits and a sound no less symphonic but decidedly less saccharine.

An eight-minute mash-up teaser of the band's latest album, "The Fragile Army," due June 19, reveals a band possibly embracing the underbelly and cracks in its perpetual glee. If so, it's exactly what the Polyphonic Spree needs to do right now. [...]

The Spree's biggest problem was that the world wasn't the same as it was when "The Beginning Stages" was recorded in 2000. Only the pharmaceutically maintained and delusional can hold a bulletproof smile in the face of anything. The big albums of 2004 — Kanye West's "The College Dropout," Green Day's "American Idiot," Modest Mouse's "Good News for People Who Love Bad News," Arcade Fire's "Funeral" — were disgruntled and anxious, at odds with the Spree's devotion to the sunny side of the street.

Huh? Given a country that has everything going for it that we have over the last 24 years, why isn't it the anxious who sound forced? Has there ever been a time and a place in History when it was more appropriate to be gruntled?

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 9, 2007 11:31 AM