Today is my youngest son’s 6th birthday. Happy Birthday Jasper! What more can a six year old ever want on his birthday than a review on 3hive dedicated to him? Maybe he’ll appreciate it more in ten years. When he wakes up he’s gonna be appreciating the chocolate chip muffin I bought him from our local donut shop.
Back to Happy Birthday the band: the fine purveyors of music, Sub Pop, fell in love with Kyle Thomas’ work as King Tuff. He brought on Chris Weisman and Ruth Garbus about a year and a half ago to back him up on a bunch of new song’s he’d written. Sub Pop picked them up after they’d played five shows. And this wonderful album is the happy ending to chapter one of Happy Birthday’s hopefully epic journey. The skewed musical note sketched out on the cover together with their label’s name describe the band’s music to a tee. If I had to make up a genre name for Happy Birthday, I’d call it hand-clap doodle rock. They don’t actually use hand-claps on the album, but most of their songs are so fun that you wanna hand-clap your way through them. RIYL: Let’s Active, Daniel Pinkwater.