{Happy Birthday plays Capitol Hill Block Party on Saturday, July 24 at 6:30pm at Neumos.}
Happy Birthday is a pop trio from Brattleboro, Vermont who released their debut, self-titled album on Sub Pop earlier this year. It is a very catchy, if varied, album and one that could fly under a lot of radars but still has some of the best earworm songs you may hear this year. With song titles like “Pink Strawberry Shake” and “Fun,” this is a band that is meant to be heard in July. Maybe “summer jam” is a term thrown around loosely and about as overused as “California Gurls” is overplayed, but there is something irresistible about a song in a major key, with a big hook and addictive chorus.
One song that fits that ideal for me and one that’s been in rotation on my iPod as of late is “Girls FM,” three minutes of lo-fi pop bliss that should sound welcome whether the band is in the corner of a DIY art space or on blasting from an AM radio in your car, speeding down an interstate. The chorus, which begins “I’m always on the same frequency; girls FM; everybody is looking like a girl to me” quickly lodged into my head and was difficult to get away from it. Not that I minded. I asked singer/guitarist Kyle Thomas about the song in a phone interview and he said “I was thinking about everyone being on the same frequency but it wasn’t really ‘Girls FM’. Then [bassist] Chris [Weisman] suggested that title and came up with the lyric ‘everybody is looking like a girl to me.’ I just thought that was really good and we went with it.” He then said “the song wrote itself really easily; it just came out, basically.”
Another “girls” song that is quite catchy is “Perverted Girl,” an ode of sorts to sex-positive women. The tone and vocals change often between a crooning falsetto and a noisy screech. The bridge is unexpected and is a few moments of dirge-y chaos. Of the song’s muse, Thomas told me “I was inspired by Aline Kominsky-Crumb, she’s R. Crumb’s wife and she’s also a comic book artist.” Then he added that “her style is very crude and always about sex; she’s awesome.” Moreover, he noted “I also have a lot of friends who are girls who are on the perverted side. I appreciate it when a girl can be open like that and if I had my choice, I’d be that way too.”
It seems fitting that Happy Birthday has a distinctively pop sound while working within a punk and DIY ethos and that Thomas said he found inspiration in what is likely one of the best pop-punk bands of this generation. He said “the first band I was really obsessed with was Green Day and if you listen hard enough you can hear that in there. I was really into Dookie when it came out and that got me into a lot more underground punk stuff.”
Sub Pop learned of Happy Birthday through his solo venture, King Tuff. He told me “people who worked there happened to have the record (King Tuff Was Dead) and they liked it. They came and saw me play and talked to me. I told them I had a new band that I wanted to do a record with and that was how that started, but they approached me about King Tuff, not Happy Birthday.”
Happy Birthday is a more collaborative process Thomas said, “I’ve recorded whole albums by myself and I think they’re good but when other people are giving their input, it always adds another facet that I never would have thought of. I really like working with other people.” He also added “I had a lot of the songs (from the album) written or partially-written before we formed the band and then me and [drummer] Ruth [Garbus] and Chris worked them out together and it’s turned into this other thing. That’s usually how it works. I start the song off with the basics of the idea and they give their input and it turns into something else.”
When putting together Happy Birthday, Thomas said Garbus and Weisman were long-time friends, “we’ve been friends for a really long time and played music together before this band. It was easy because we already played together a bunch.” Garbus, who he said he’s known for about ten years, “moved to Vermont and needed a place to live. I met her through her sister (Merrill) who actually lived there at the time, who is also a really incredible musician too; she goes by tUnE-yArDs. Ruth started living with me and we started becoming really good friends and were playing in a band called Feathers. Weisman “sometimes played in that band as well because his brother was in it.”
The trio is beginning a tour that will take them across the US, including playing in Seattle this weekend at the Capitol Hill Block Party, playing on Saturday, July 24 at 6:30pm at Neumos. It’ll be in the middle of the summer, while the sun is still out (or hopefully, making predictions of Seattle weather this summer is at your own peril), which should be the ideal time to listen to Happy Birthday.
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Wow! A song based on Aline! I’m sold!