Happyness at the Live4ever Media Lounge, SXSW 2015 (Photo: Paul Bachmann for Live4ever)
The greatest moments of happiness come unexpectedly, often with a sense of effortlessness.
Fitting then that South London trio Happyness burst onto the scene earlier this year with an effortlessly outstanding self-titled EP. The group’s breezy melodies and sly lyrical jabs immediately connected, leading into debut album ‘Weird Little Birthday‘ which Live4ever praised as displaying ‘songwriting principals far more upright than at first they seem’.
The group’s origins lead us much further back though, right back to the brief British indie rock commercial explosion of the mid-noughties. “We were all very into that under aged, British indie scene in the mid-2000s that was centric on bands such as early Bombay Bicycle Club and The Maccabees,” explains bass player Jonny Allan during an interview at the 2015 SXSW Festival. “Bands that we probably haven’t listened to in over seven years but we were all into it.”
In this short-lived environment of commercial sonic boom, the trio met at shows and naturally drifted into their own bands as teenagers. “Eventually we realised that all the music we loved wasn’t really that kind of thing, and gradually we fell out with every friend we ever had and ended up just being the three of us,” Allan continues. “We didn’t really have a choice.”
Unlike many of their contemporaries though, Happyness’ sound isn’t one honed by relentlessly pounding the unique charms of Britain’s toilet circuit. Instead, the trio’s earliest days were spent holed up in a shed, recording instead of gigging virtually non-stop. “We just wanted to have a bank of material, because as far as we’re concerned we’ve never really fallen in love with a band properly unless they have something for you to go exploring in, so it seemed a bit weird for us,” explains Allan. “It’s not the way that we’ve ever experienced music really – just getting into bands that had a live show and nothing else.”
This patient approach slowly allowed them to organically form their own sound – one which began to combine the cozy lo-fi approach of Sparklehorse and others with the wry humour of lyricists like Mark E. Smith and Stephen Malkmus.
And it’s the quality of the material which is chiefly gaining so much recognition right now, yet the band’s unique approach to marketing has courted a lot of attention too. With a press company ‘grabbing out lines that were maybe a little contentious’ (sample: “I’m the motherfucking birthday boy. Don’t steal my thunder, baby Jesus”), this branding scheme inspired a lot of curiosity as ‘Weird Little Birthday’ began to make waves in the summer of 2014. Marketing aside, as the album was recorded they were still tuned into the same artistic process which started with the three of them were jamming in that shed. Still confined. Still isolated from the outside world.
“The way we made the album was a very insular process – us literally just keeping to ourselves and spending a lot of time over it, hanging out and making it,” explains Benji Compston. “We didn’t, and still don’t, try to get preoccupied with the whole industry. We have a lot of faith in this record, but really not much expectation of where it’s going to go exactly.”
No nonsense. No convention. Approaches which reflect bright in the music. Happyness’ songs don’t sound fussed over, or painstakingly crafted, there’s a youthful energy and urgency to both the tunes and everything they do. “We realised the perfect sonic quality of a record doesn’t have to come before the concept or the feel of it,” Allan tell us. “So if we want it to be a certain way, and if no-one was going to be able to do it for us, we may as well do it for ourselves and if it doesn’t sound as fat or polished as it could that’s less important to us as getting our point across.”
It was a happy accident then that after having some trouble finding a mixing engineer, the band stumbled across Adam Lasus. Lasus, who has produced and mixed albums for the likes of Yo La Tengo and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, immediately fell in love with the record. “He’s been really good to us, helping us with mixing and other stuff,” says Compston. “He’s a good man. He gives a shit about the right shit!”
Although they’re just now releasing their debut album in the US, these songs are deceptively older than you might at first expect, already gobbled up in the UK. “Just a kind of disclaimer; we made this record a year and a half ago,” Allan states. “There’s something that’s kind of odd to us, because we have to think about how we were thinking a year and a half ago, because it may be an entirely different set of bands but the bands that were influencing us at the time are some of our favorite bands in the world, but we’ve got a little more distance from them now and we may have been obsessing at the time we were making the record.”
There has been much discussion and debate recently amongst music fans and critics alike on the state of rock n’ roll. Is it still a vitally creative genre, with room to grow as other genres such as hip-hop and electronica see their own artists pushing the creative boundaries? “We know a hell of a lot more about rock than we do about hip-hop, but a lot of the indie rock scene seems incredible stagnant to us,” says Allan. “It’s weird – it seems to be the ones that are making it aren’t pushing it as hard.”
“There’s a lot to say for the industry becoming obsessed by this image of a young band being super good at their instruments and signing up these really young guys who hadn’t quite formed the idea what they really wanted to do or wanted to achieve,” Cooper adds.
A perfect point to reflect on Happyness, and how in a lot of ways they are the antithesis to this moulded, industry-based approach. They didn’t tour the live circuit, nor did they seek out a professional studio for their debut album. Instead, this is a band freely formed on their own accord, on their own time and on their own terms. A band which only cares about the music, the quality of it and how their fans engage with it.
There’s no pre-occupation with chasing fame or success – for these three happiness is simply all about Happyness.
