My Favorite ‘The
Happiest Days of My Life’ (Hungry Audio 7")
(April '05)
From Long Island, New York, this quintet ride the new wave of 80s nostalgia to its English bedsit grave. But if they like England so much, why do they spell their name in the American version?
Pedantry aside, ‘The Happiest Days of My Life’ is a perfectly bouncy piece of vinyl, all ironic nods to camera wrapped up in unabashed swirls of gaudy music; that never credible, but really adorable independent-pop contradiction thing. Y’know, the uncool kid who finds nothing of worth in mainstream culture, but rips off their own version and finds niche acceptance in their outsider status: everyone from Heavenly to Bis has followed the same route, and lest we forget, Pulp even took it to the charts. The deadpan lyrics are always at odds with the cheesy music, but this doesn’t mean the music shouldn’t be taken seriously. Sometimes, for pure emotive power, there is nothing better than a three-minute pop song, however twee it might sound. And what does ‘The Happiest Days of My Life’ sound like? My Favorite convey their self-conscious angst through a cute-as-hell Isobel Campbell voice, college-rock guitars and disco synths. All this alt-rock alienation of theirs leads to a wish for fevered melancholia: “the darkness is brighter than all the lights in the disco.” Apparently it's better to be sad than to be nothing at all, just to be feeling something.
On the flipside, ‘The Suburbs are Killing Us’ moans of being “asleep when we should be dancing.” In their own wishful disco, they’d surely be dancing to the Smiths, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s not so impressive to go pilfering lyrics about old houses and bicycle chains, nor to deliver these words in an arch manner presumably meant to emulate Morrissey. The bloke here just sounds annoyingly camp.
All said, then, My Favorite is the A-side material, and we should all dance to that while we laugh at our sadness.
