SALT LAKE CITY SOUND OFF

The Happies’ “Everything’s Fine, Cover Your Eyes”

By Randy Harward, 3-17-06

	The Happies

Meet The Happies. On the strength of their first album (titled, incidentally, Meet the Happies), the quintet was deemed City Weekly's Best Unsigned Local Band of 2005. But the album, which you can download in its entirety at TheHappies.net, is a sleepy little pop album that screams virgin recording. It sounds tentative, as if The Happies weren’t quite debuting but rather cautiously peering out at the local music scene from behind their semi-somber ear candy and happy appellation. It's on their newest album, If We Were Really Here, that The Happies really strut their stuff. It’s a mature, focused album fraught with songs that win your attention and affection from their introductory notes—and continue to reel you in as delightful, sublime verses and choruses fly and flutter through your core. For a taste, trying “Everything’s Fine, Cover Your Eyes." It's a soaring power-indie-pop anthem with airy vocals, subtly singing organ and guitars that walk on gilded eggshells until it’s time for them to cut in and sing out. For more (like the geek-rock via the Polyphonic Spree gem “Sun Don’t Shine" or the plaintive, wintery “Polarity") visit the band's page at MySpace.

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