The Underground of Happiness

I saw Trashcan Sinatras play live last weekend. What a joy that was. A band at the top of their craft, 25 years + on. This album (pic) features some of the best one liners in all of pop music - "got to get the keys from my girlfriend", "disco dancing in the morning" - and that's just in the first song, which opened the show . More to come on that gig on the blog. August Wells are back on tour in the spring with band which should be very special. We had a run of beautiful vibes-tinged jazz pieces - Kathryn Williams & Anthony Kerr from their album of jazz covers. Rayon ( Markus Acher from The Notwist ) plying similar late night tones. And Mikael Tariverdiev , the sound of St Petersburg through film in the 1970s, a bittersweet and quietly uplifting sound. And more from Hilma Nikolaisen , a gorgeous album of shifting psych pop shapes. More on these pages. The Underground of Happiness uplifting pop music of every creed www.theundergr...

The bass player with the renowned Norwegian band Sereena Maneesh strikes out into intriguing Tame Impala (grooves) meets Ariel Pink (bittersweet pop sensibility) territory. The first thing you notice is the bass playing. It’s front and centre in the mix, a beautiful warm sound and full of circular figures which are insistent and groovy. It immediately brings to mind The Byrds from around 1965-67, in which the bass went far beyond simple root notes to bring an extra voice to the arrangements. Think ‘Eight Miles High’ or ‘So you wanna be a rock and roll star’. It’s a brilliant foil to Nikolaisen’s unusual and enigmatic vocal and you’d be inclined to be humming these basslines to yourself after one listen. The next thing to say is that the songwriting has the ability to make different moods rub shoulders together without it sounding forced or for effect, but instead inherent to the song. It’s a joy, that. So the wonderful opener ‘Hermitage’ follows an urgent psych pop beginni...