Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space. Or at least Wayne Coyne and Flaming Lips’ psychedelic, strangely beautiful art-pop bathwater — as cobweb-voiced Eels frontman Mark Oliver Everett sits on the side of the tub and croons hazily about veggies, milk floats, seeing eye dogs and other suitably oddball topics. If that isn’t your definition of happiness (no matter how you spell it), you’re in the wrong place. And/or taking the wrong drugs.
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Formed in 2013, Happyness — consisting of core members Jonny Allan and Ash Kenazi — quickly gained a reputation as an unconventional and defiantly independent force in London’s alternative guitar scene. Self-recording debut-LP Weird Little Birthday before ever playing to a live audience, the band garnered critical acclaim for their wiry, ’90s indebted arrangements and haunting blissed out melodies, as well as their eclectic lyricism and ability to switch effortlessly between aching soulful poetry and wry, twisted one-liners. Worldwide tours, an NME Award for Best Lyric in 2015, and the windswept harmonies of sophomore LP Write In followed, after which the band took an unannounced two-year hiatus to work on internal issues, parting ways with bandmate Benji Compston. The duo’s live return in late 2019 was marked by drummer Kenazi’s evolution into fearless drag queen to co-front the project with singer and multi-instrumentalist Allan, and a five-piece line-up composed of Max Bloom (Yuck), Anna Vincent (Heavy Heart) and Scott Roach (Social Contract). Stormy comeback single Vegetable followed in January 2020. It sits in tone between the ragged euphoria of Weird Little Birthday and lush balladry of Write In, and with a fresh injection of offbeat, artfully self-aware lyrical turns (the song references Chumbawumba, drag queen Jujubee, vaping and Scientology’s E-meter auditing process in the space of less than four minutes), it appears the band are entering a thrilling era.”
