One Happy Island, One Happy Island

review by dave heaton

I don’t always understand what One Happy Island are singing about at first, but even then I relate to it somehow, find it interesting or moving. As I listen, I understand. For example, “Elegant Elephant” dazzles with wordplay: “I’ll be a relevant, elegant, cellophane elephant for you.” At first I think, this band has a way with words, a way with nonsense even – but then I realize that it isn’t nonsense at all. It’s a clever, fresh approach to a love song: elephants never forget after all, and neither will he.

Other times they can be immediately direct, using that same gift to capture a particular feeling, a specific moment of frailty, for example, in “How to Hurt”. It’s a moment of tender calm within a storm of uncertain feelings: “Right here and now / I’ve forgotten how to hurt”.

The music itself is as imaginative and as direct. The album opens with a Sesame Street-like instrumental lark. As we continue on, there’s plenty of spunk and cuteness, but they can also execute a more raucous rave-up or a float-along mood.

In terms of subject matter, the album, focused on people and places, takes them from what may be an archeological journey ( “Cave City Sunrise”) to an uneasy bike ride (“The Bike Song”) and onward. “The Bike Song” includes the geographically incorrect* but lovable lyric “love is not some flat midwestern state / my heart is hill-shaped”. There and everywhere the band delights in melodies and in trying new things. They’re not just letting themselves fall for standard indie-pop tropes; they’re having a blast doing things their own way.

{www.oddboxrecords.com*As a current resident of a rather hilly Midwestern city, who used to live in a comparatively flat East Coast city, I can’t help but point out that the flattest state in the US is Florida. Louisiana is second.