Album Review: Happyness- Weird Little Birthday

90’s nostalgia is at an all time high right now. And it’s not just the hot mixes that I’ve been making and sharing on this blog every Friday. And it’s not just Buzzfeed lists of toys you used to have when you were a kid, and what their Ebay value is today. It’s in a lot of new, young, up and coming bands that are copping that 90’s alt. rock sound. Some do it well, and use it more as a starting point, rather than sounding completely derivative of an entire decade of contemporary popular music.

I stop short of saying that the band Happyness had me until the cringe worthy lyric, “Remember when we broke into the park, and you got laid, and I watched? And you said that was fine”—the opening line to “It’s On You,” a track that arrives after the halfway point on the London outfit’s debut full length, Weird Little Birthday. The truth is the band didn’t have me at all—up until that point, I was listening with one foot out the door, rolling my eyes at how hard this band is trying to sound like Sparklehorse at times, and wincing slightly at throwaway lyrics like “I’m the motherfucking birthday boy, don’t try to steal my thunder baby Jesus.”

Happyness turned up on my radar twice recently—once in a place that I frequent to…obtain…new music, and once in a piece from the Oregonian, that discussed three new-ish acts that are “bringing back alt-rock’s late 90’s outsider ambitions” (their words, not mine.) And after seeing names like Yo La Tengo and the aforementioned Sparklehorse name dropped in blurbs about Happyness, I thought the very least I could do is give them a try.

Weird Little Birthday isn’t a bad album, but much like countless other records that are recorded and released and consumed, it’s not the kind of thing that is going to change lives—certainly not mine, and it is certainly far from memorable. There are times when the band is trying so hard to sound like Sparklehorse (“Orange Luz” and “Reagan’s Lost Weekend” are the two best examples of this) that you’d think the band is knelt down in front of Mark Linkous’ grave, attempting some kind of séance to bring him back from the dead. 

Frontman Benji Compston’s lyrics go back and forth between being incredibly insipid, then horribly misogynistic. But he also takes himself too seriously at times, and fancies himself to be some kind of poet of sorts, like on the track “Lofts,” where he sleepily mumbles, “She wore skin on skin, with amphetamine on the hair of her lip,” before backsliding into juvenile name calling, “You’re such a whore…there’s something in you that can make you such a slut. It started as a scratch, but it’s now an infected cut.”

Earlier, on “Pumpkin Noir,” he waxes about how difficult it is to be a musician—“Spend all my money on my band…Paid a woman to give me a hand…” To me, it’s unclear if that last part is about asking for the assistance of a female vocalist (one does appear later on Weird Little Birthday, or if he purchased a rub-n-tug. Either way, Compston’s life appears to be incredibly difficult and challenging.

Musically, when the band isn’t aping Sparklehorse, or the 90’s indie-rock fuzz of Yo La Tengo or Superchunk, another band their sound has been compared to is “mid-career” Wilco, which you can hear echoes of on the shambling “Naked Patient,” and on the reserved “Leave The Party.” Elsewhere, there are slight attempts to incorporated psychedelic pop, and meandering jazzy shuffles, like on the self-indulgent title track.  Happyness are the kind of band that not to only wear their influences on their sleeves, but wear an entire three-piece suit made out those influences as well, but as I was listening, I started to draw some slight comparisons to last summer’s Hebronix LP, Unreal.

But, you know, that album was good.

For how derivative and uninspired it comes off as at times, on Weird Little Birthday, Happyness actually are able to craft some catchy moments. Many of the aforementioned tracks, like “Naked Patients,” or the rough around the edges “Anything I Do is All Right” are not so much “infectious” but when you’re in the moment, you will be moved to tap your foot, or nod your head along, but there is little here that will stick with you later on. By the time it unceremoniously wraps up, the impression I was left with that as a band, Happyness should spend less time trying to sound like somebody else, and more time on being themselves.

Weird Little Birthday is out now in the UK.