The Polyphonic Spree
Lakewood Theater
Dallas
"How many of you are scared of snakes?" isn't a question you'd normally expect to hear at a rock show. But by the time the Fort Worth Zoo's Sean Green posed this query, on the first night of the Polyphonic Spree's holiday shindig, it was stage business as usual. He was preparing to parade a python down the aisles of the Lakewood Theater, but he might as well have been asking for a little more guitar in his monitor.
After all, we already had witnessed walk-ons by a capuchin monkey and an ornery reindeer. Eventually, the evening would feature appearances by a penguin, a hyacinth macaw, a great horned owl, a little drummer girl in pigtails (ten-year-old Rachel Trachtenburg, of goofy support act the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players), and a guy in a Frosty the Snowman costume who wandered through the crowd as if the Flaming Lips' tour bus had left without him.
Even for the Spree, no strangers to outlandish merrymaking, it was a different kind of performance. And it attracted a different kind of crowd?parents (hip dads with goatees, as well as less hip ones in Cosby sweaters and hats with antlers attached) escorting kids, some barely old enough to walk, most young enough to ask, "Reindeer are real?"
Some of those kids scurried onstage for a reading of "'Twas the Night Before Christmas," then stayed as the 23-strong Spree appeared, clad in red robes and Santa hats. "Get your programs out, and get ready to sing your hearts out. Christmas is here!" frontman Tim DeLaughter shouted as the band exploded into "Do You Hear What I Hear?" The kids onstage stuffed their fingers in their ears, but the band plowed ahead with "The Little Drummer Boy" and their own "Christmas Is Here" before finally taking a breath with a surprisingly restrained "Silent Night." The audience seemed to be waiting for a tidal-wave crescendo, which finally came with the closer, a mash-up of the traditional "Joy to the World" and the Three Dog Night version.
The Spree's Hollywood Records labelmate Patrick Park was a gimmick-free palate cleanser: just a guy and a guitar and a brief set of songs more like "Pink Moon" than "White Christmas." Then, after a performance by the Trachtenburgs -- looking, in their silver disco outfits, like the Partridge Family in this pear tree -- the Spree returned, sporting the silly grins of kids who had just learned to tie their shoes. They kicked into "It's the Sun," and the whole place went tent-revival.
DeLaughter lost his holiday spirit during "Light and Day," yelling out for the band's road manager when a bundle of balloons failed to drop on cue. But they finally fell, and after more false endings than The Return of the King, the band capped off the five-hour show by serving milk and cookies in the lobby. And to all a good night.
