Gee muses

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The Metro Theatre, Sydney
29/07/08

Famously, a reviewer once declared he’d touched God at a Radiohead concert. I didn’t at The Polyphonic Spree but I went so close it didn’t matter. This was the best concert of 2008. An extraordinary celebration of everything that is great about rock music; uplifting, deeply moving at times, thunderous symphonic rock, contrasted by great delicacy and shade, performed by a group of 23 musicians and singers. So good was this amazing performance – and I’m not prone to waxing lyrical and tossing out superlatives left, right and centre but I’m going to here - that I’d put it up there with greatest shows I’ve seen over the past 40 years: Led Zeppelin in 1972, AC/DC (1974 and ’76), Frank Zappa (1976), Radio Birdman (1977), Tom Waits (1978), The Cure (1981 and 2000), Bob Dylan (2001), Brian Wilson (2004), to name a few … revered company, indeed.

What made this concert special though was the pure inescapable joy that lies at the core of the Texans’ distinctly un-American’s music. They reach for the sky – physically and spiritually, and this audience was drawn in. The result was that incredible energy that surges back and forth between the two. Everywhere people smiled; for the whole two hours, they embraced, danced, sang, punched the air, moshed – nobody who was there will ever forget the cover of Nirvana’s Lithium that had the entire Metro moshing as one! Couples pashed, several people were heard telling their partner they loved them; the audience parted – like the proverbial Red Sea - when the band shucked off its black army fatigues for the original white smocks and returned to the stage via the back of the Metro and down the stairs through the crowd. People hustled just to high-five a member or get close. It all sounds religious, cultish, dangerously close to overkill but, you know what, it was simply glorious.

Led by founder and lead vocalist, Tim DeLaughter, who has an extraordinary amount of energy and a marvellous voice, the six back-up singers, two drummers, two violinists, one cellist, one harpist (yes, a harp), three brass players, a flautist, three guitarists, bass guitarist, and two keyboardists, simply soared. It was extravagant, poetic, humbling. People even cried with joy. It even blew The Arcade Fire away – and anybody who saw its January shows will know just how good they were. This was a massive triumph, a masterpiece, more reasons to believe than you dare to dream. I’m still smiling 24 hours later.