The Underground of Happiness

A lovely slice of psych with a small p pop from the band lead by David Thayer which draws collaborations from such as Laetitia Sadier (Thayer is also part of the Laetitia Sadier Source Ensemble ), John Herndon of Tortoise and Giorgio Tuma. On this single Caroline Sallee of Caroline Says sings her own lyrics while chorusy guitars cavort analogue synths swoop and field recordings of birds flit in and out. It comes across like a chilled but insistent Sterolab offcut with the bass in particular beautifully high and close and warm in the mix. Sumptuous and slinky.

And now for a double whammy of Laetitia-flavoured goodness...as the NME might say. Laetitia Sadier’s third solo album sees her take another short step away from the beat-driven glory of Stereolab, in the direction of something more meditative, you might say taking a cosmic view, although as much as ever there is a distinct social, or even sociological, undercurrent to the music. In fairness, it’s not as if drums (and particularly bass – the second half of ‘Butter side up’ has a driving ‘Lab-ish backbeat over the refrain “we need answers”) play no part on Something shines , but the overriding impression from these songs is of someone taking stock of the world, probing, questioning, rather than making any overt, bold statements. The epitome of this is the middle track, ‘Release from the centre of your heart’, which comes across very much as the centrepiece of the album. It has shades of Stereolab in the vocal layers, but these are outweighed by thoughts of the orchestral ...