Happiness

Fridge have maintained a low profile since their last album, 1999’s Eph. In the interim they’ve stayed busy though, setting up their own record label, Text, while band leader Kieron Hebden released an album as Fourtet. In fact Happiness takes its musical cue from the same folk influences that dominated Hebden’s solo project. Severing its link with the moody tones of Eph via the prowling bassline on ‘Drum Machines And Glockenspiel’, Happiness is a pleasantly mellow series of freeform folk/jazz jams, with the ’70s psychedelia of ‘Five Four Child Voice’ and the otherworldly shimmer of Cut Up Piano And Xylophone’ boasting a naïve charm that’s impossible to ignore or dislike.