Polyphonic Spree Frontman Shares New Album Demos

Polyphonic Spree frontman Tim DeLaughter took a break from his Dallas home studio and shacked up in a tony West Village, New York City apartment to write what is expected to become the follow-up to the group's 2007 album, 'The Fragile Army.' The official studio recording sessions, according to the band's blog, began August 4th, but for the two weeks leading up to it, DeLaughter posted six new demos for fans to check out.

The goal is to give a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the band's writing process so people can hear how a bare-bones demo written by DeLaughter turns into the anthemic jubilee of noise and flowery chaos that is the Polyphonic Spree's trademark. Not to mention, it's a lot easier to throw the songs up on a blog for your choir to hear as opposed to copying each of the 20-plus members in an e-mail for every track (this method probably could have helped Chris Martin and Coldplay prove they wrote some of their latest songs too).

The most stripped down of the Polyphonic's fourth album demos are 'Blurry' and 'Relief,' where DeLaughter recalls an electric-less Neil Young. The dreamier 'Apart,' about overcoming pain, went through some GarageBand tweaks before being thrown up on the blog. With the 'Meat' demo, DeLaughter complains that "the mic was a little too close to the organ so the lyrics are somewhat buried." He even had to resort to a RadioShack handheld tape recorder to get his idea for the 'Breathe' demo down before he forgot it.

While these aforementioned demos may or may not sound anything like this by the time they are filtered through the rest of the Polyphonic choir and further elaborated on in the studio, one confirmed track has surfaced -- the full-length version of DeLaughter's Emmy-nominated 'United States of Tara' theme song. According to the blog, the song has picked up a new title, 'The Ride,' and can be heard here.

While nothing is promised, you might be able to hear some new songs when the Polyphonic Spree play a handful of dates this summer.