Polyphonic Spree - Mark Pirro Interview

by Tina Whelski

If a rainbow exploded, you'd have Polyphonic Spree, the 25-piece band led by former Tripping Daisy frontman Tim DeLaughter. The orchestral pop ensemble consisting of a choir and players on keys, guitars, strings, percussion, bass, trumpet, trombone, French horn, flute and theremin, recently traded their old white robes in for colorful ones and re-assembled for their sophmore album, Together We’re Heavy.

Like on the previous effort, The Beginning Stages of The Polyphonic Spree, the band is still “reaching for the sun,” but the updated palette on stage should warn you not to expect the same journey. In fact Polyphonic Spree have a much darker imagination on Together We’re Heavy.

“An album is like a snapshot of where a band is at a particular time,” says Polyphonic Spree bassist and founding member Mark Pirro. “…Anybody that’s heard the first record is going to be shocked by this record.

No matter how dramatic the jolt however, you’re still likely to catch that contagious smile that covers faces at Polyphonic Spree shows. For some reason the bands gotten a lot of slack in the press for being “happy” on stage. But the air of hopefulness has been a little misinterpreted. The grins you see are a triumph over pain, not an ignorance of it.

“There’s like this beautiful melancholy working underneath it all,” says Pirro. “It’s like that kind of feeling you get sometimes on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Nothing’s really bad, but it’s like you look at the clouds and somebody goes, ‘God what an ugly gray sky that is’ and you kind of think to yourself, ‘Oh what a pretty shade of gray.’ It’s more like that. Live it’s definitely energetic. Maybe when you combine those together people interpret that as happy.”

Polyphonic Spree is opening upcoming dates with “We Sound Amazed,” the first track on the new album. Re-creating studio sounds live was a bit tricky, but putting 25 heads together they figured out how to pull it off for a great effect.

“I don’t want to give too much away,” says Pirro, “But it seems like it’s (the music) going to go one direction and then it totally comes out of nowhere and hits you in the face with this overwhelming sound…We definitely enjoy opening the show that way. It’s very dramatic and suspenseful.”

The visual volume of 25 vibrantly outfitted players unleashing tone before you is also overpowering. If you question the reason for the robes though, it’s actually quite practical. Wearing robes prevents all the members’ different clothing styles from being a distraction. Though it definitely enhances an already surreal experience.

The Polyphonic Spree moves into Irving Plaza for two nights on August 24 and 25.

Originally published in The Aquarian Weekly 8/19/04.

Polyphonic Spree performing "Light And Day" on TV show Scrubs.


Polyphonic Spree "Light And Day" Video.

Senses Fail - Buddy Nielsen Interview

by Tina Whelski

Punk, hardcore and metal are not sounds you’d typically associate with poetry, religion and philosophy. But when you meet Senses Fail’s lead singer/lyricist Buddy Nielsen you begin to see how they can all coexist. The band’s brawny new album, Let It Enfold You is titled after a Charles Bukowski poem. A track called “The Irony Of Dying On Your Birthday” draws from the work of mythologist Joseph Campbell. And the band’s own name is derived from beliefs Neilsen discovered in Hinduism.

While Nielsen is the first to admit that at age 20 he knows “jack shit” about the whys of the world, he does understand what he feels about what he’s exposed to and that’s worth talking about in the band’s music.

With Senses Fail’s successful EP The Depths Of Dreams now a few years old, Let It Enfold You offers the Bergen County band an opportunity to remind fans and critics alike that they’re not teenagers anymore. That they’ve grown up musically and emotionally. Senses I met Nielsen at the Moonrock Diner in New York to talk about the band’s self-destructive music.

Aquarian Weekly: Can you talk about your mindset going into Let It Enfold You?

Buddy Neilsen: …It was kind of about myself, as most records are about the person writing the lyrics. It’s called Let It Enfold You, which is a poem by Charles Bukowski…I just like the way he was always so negative. I’m such a negative person and such a glass-is-half-empty-kind-of-guy because I feel like I’ve been so fortunate with everything in life. I make myself suffer because I need to feel like I’ve earned something.

AW: You’re waiting for something bad to happen then?

Neilsen: Exactly. Enfold means to totally consume. Instead of just seeing something you’re able to feel it. Looking at a beautiful sunset for example, you see it, but actually being able to have that move you? What I liked about Bukowski’s poem so much and the name and what it meant was that he was such a negative person. One of the only things I’ve read of his that was outright positive was this. I was like, “Wow, if this guy can be positive?”

AW: Some tenets of Daoism also enter your songwriting—the idea of letting things come and go—letting them flow around the rocks like a river and not getting overly upset. You admitted you’re not like that, but that’s something you idealize?

Neilsen: It would be a great way to live your life where you’re just like a pinball. Whatever happens happens and you can’t control it, but you find the good in it…Kids have said before, “Well Daoism is about being a pacifist and he’s writing these violent lyrics.” It’s more of me wishing I could be like that. That’s what the title track “Let It Unfold You” is about…I’m not what I want to be. I’m not where I want to be…It's me wanting to destroy myself, and I do that in a couple of the songs, and then I kind of tie it back into, “Well that’s not really what I want. What I really want is to be happy.”

AW: Can you talk about another track with a self-destructive streak?

Neilsen: There’s this one song called “Angela Baker and My Obsession With Fire.” I talk about how I wish that I never would have started thinking—reading about different philosophy and religion and things…I just became very angry at the way the world works and the way that people are and I talk about how I wish that I was ignorant.

AW: You think reading fed those feelings?

Neilsen: No. It’s just the truth. And the truth sucks. People don’t think. They have no idea what’s going on. They don’t understand the world. They don’t understand themselves. They make ridiculous mistakes all the time and that wouldn’t happen if they had thought more about it and more about themselves…I actually burn down my house in the song because it’s kind of the way that I show that I just want to be self-destructive and at the end of the song I’m like, “I thought this is what I wanted, but I guess I was just scared to really be alive and really experience things and feel things.” A lot of people don’t like my lyrics though.

AW: They’re your impressions though so does it really matter if people like them?

Neilsen: …I’m not a great writer. I just have something that I want to say…A lot of things I might not say the best way…but I’m only 20 years old. You know. I don’t know jack shit about anything. I’m not trying to say that I know about all these religions and I know about what people should be doing. I’m just trying to figure it out. The one thing about this criticism is that it hurts. Especially when people say something about my lyrics because I care about them…I think that I tried really hard to say something meaningful and if I didn’t say it in the best, most clever way, I’m sorry cause I think sometimes being more up front and straight-forward is the best way to do it. If you use metaphors too much people don’t understand you.

AW: A lot of people still measure the band by the EP you wrote when you were teenagers. The new CD should change that though.

Neilsen: The EP is a totally different thing. I wrote those lyrics when I was 17-years-old…It was my first time doing it. I tried to do stuff that meant something to me and it did, but I wasn’t obviously the smartest, most clever thing in the world…We’re a young band. It’s always stuck with us. People don’t think we’ve aged. We’re going to be forever 18. Our drummer’s going to be forever 15. That’s one thing that’s hard for us to get over.

AW: Your band name comes from the Hindu belief that being alive is hell—that the only way to reach Nirvana is to ultimately have no attachments to anything. What attracted you to the idea of people then going out to live in the middle of the woods, not eating or drinking and just meditating to a point where nothing exists and ultimately the senses fail?

Neilsen: I think the suffering…self-suffering to achieve a goal…to achieve a higher level…detachment from everything for their higher knowledge.

AW: Your band also has a fascination with pirates. We get a hint of that in the tune “Rum Is For Drinking, Not For Burning,” where the captain goes down with his ship. If people don’t get that from your music, your tattoos give you away.

Neilsen: We like rum. We’re pirates. We got skulls on our van. We don’t care about what anybody thinks about us, which sometimes is a bad thing because it gets us into trouble. We used to get in a lot of fights. We stopped that though cause it’s bad for our band.

AW: Being a musician is a little bit like being a pirate.

Neilsen: You’re on the concrete, which is like the sea. You have your van…I just think it’s a fun way to look at touring, going from place to place.

Originally published in The Aquarian Weekly 8/19/04. *Note: Band photo 2006.

Senses Fail performing "Rum Is For Drinking (Not Burning).