By Lynn Rapoport

EVERYTHING MIGHT BE different now if I'd gone to the Apple Store last month. I might be feeling a stronger sense of allegiance in the long and spirited battle between Mac and PC users. Perhaps I'd have a new laptop. But most important, I would probably be listening to the Polyphonic Spree's new album, Together We're Heavy (Hollywood), with a more positive attitude.

Historically, it's been hard to say no to the Polyphonic Spree. Since they began touring on the strength of their 10-song debut album, The Beginning Stages of ... the Polyphonic Spree (Hollywood, but originally passed around as a demo recording), I've seen them perform twice and both times walked away in a state of disheveled adoration. Twenty-four strong and led along by the personable onstage ministrations of bandleader Tim DeLaughter, the 12-member choral section and assorted musicians performing on trumpets, woodwinds, harp, cello, guitars, keyboards, and theremin tend to fill the stage with their instruments and billowing multihued robes – and the whole venue with an emotionally keyed-up presence. They're like a glowingly attractive, well-scrubbed gang whose turf is getting expressionless indie kids to open up and feel something. And indeed, when the room is filled with so much ecstatic dedication, all doubts tend to fly out the window, leaving behind blissed-out, sweaty, pogoing dancers to fill the vacuum. Deeply repressed and uncomfortable expressing joy in public spaces, I was pretty much their target demographic.

And yet I wasn't ready to see what that would look like at the Apple Store, where the band staged a recent San Francisco concert – though I was curious to know whether it would bother the fans to be grooving out in the middle of a computer store, albeit a computer store designed to look and feel like a way of life.

Of course, whether you want to call them a cult, a small religion, or simply a large band from Texas, the Polyphonic Spree seem designed to look and feel like a way of life. Although they no doubt mostly go home to separate apartments at the end of the tour, have different taste in street clothes, and occasionally disagree over politics, their chorister uniforms and uniform expressions of revelatory engagement do seem intended to suggest a movement ardently embraced. Their songs, meanwhile, all written by DeLaughter, tend less toward storytelling and more toward mantra-like texts to live by. One is encouraged to celebrate nature, or celebrate in order to find the answer, or reach for the sun.

These messages, while admittedly harder to stomach when unaccompanied by DeLaughter's rousing musical arrangements, always seemed to make sense inside the vortex of the Polyphonic Spree's spirited road shows – or at least feel like the right thing to say at the time. But in the wake of a recent sunburst of synergy across my TV screen, they don't even sound like New Age proclamations anymore; they sound like slogans, which begins to make me question my standing in the demographic. After my favorite Shins song was used to sell flame-broiled burgers, it seems silly to complain, but I'll admit it cast a pall over my evening to hear The Beginning Stages' "Light and Day/Reach for the Sun" – a song capable of bringing joy and harmonic convergence to masses of strangers in rock clubs all across the country – spinning ecstatically in time with the revolutions of a bauble-shaped, candy-colored car and its fellow traveler, a tiny, white portable stereo.

"Light and Day" is hardly the first discovery to be made by a savvy ad campaigner, and no doubt many other admirable works will follow in its footsteps. But not all songs turned jingles have "Light and Day" 's – and the Polyphonic Spree's – stirring, evangelistic power to proselytize a way of life one might otherwise only consider adopting on three tabs of acid. And while I'll admit to having enjoyed feeling that feeling, I enjoy it substantially less when the song is being used to hawk the lifestyle of happy couple Volkswagen and iPod, which, after all, mainly offer convenience and a nice ride. Together we're heavy, but do we want to be together anymore?

Meanwhile, the band have many new fans, some of whom were probably shopping in the Apple Store that day. And the new album sounds more carefully put together – no 36-minute noodling sound odyssey rounds off the second half, at any rate. Sadly, I don't hear the gorgeous power surges that pulse through much of The Beginning Stages, on songs like "It's the Sun" and "Soldier Girl" – possibly because such songs don't happen often, and possibly because I'm no longer feeling that rush of first love for the band. But when allusions to "It's the Sun" surface in DeLaughter's vocals in what turns out to be my favorite track, "When the Fool Becomes a King," it does make me wonder, what happens if it was better in the beginning? What if the next stages simply mark the beginning of a more mediocre time? A time of record deals, marketing synergy, and appearances on Conan O'Brien? And what if a band like that just shouldn't go there?

A band has to eat. I can't imagine how many compromises it takes to support a band with 24 mouths to feed. And perhaps in the end, it doesn't really matter where they go to spread the word. I just wish their songs didn't sound like future commercials to me now, because the Mute button often comes into play at such moments. And the more I'm asked to buy, the harder it becomes to believe.