RECORD OF THE WEEK – Happyness ‘Floatr’

Happyness have emerged with their charm intact. More polished and sonically expansive than their previous efforts, ‘Floatr’ couldn’t conjure up that lush, hazy lost summer feeling of drinking beers in a park more vivdly without a policeman arresting you for breaching lockdown rules.

It shimmers with wonky ’90s-indebted pop smarts, a daisy-chain of balmy nostalgia with blissed-out guitars, hushed vocals and kaleidoscopic lyrics. ‘Vegetable’, written amid the shrapnel of the group’s break-up, is a pop song that manages to include lyrical references to Chumbawamba’s ‘Tubthumping’, RuPaul’s Drag Race alumnus Jujubee and Scientology. It’s a veritable Family Fortunes board of ‘Things You Wouldn’t Expect To See In A Song Together’. The title track, meanwhile, deals evocatively with the struggle to come to terms with yourself.