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Buffalo garage/psych rock outfit Sleepy Hahas are back with a substantial new EP I Am Not A Happy Person that builds nicely on last year's Cranberry Juice & Battery Acid. Drummer Steve Tripi, bassist Mo Halliday, keyboardist Phil Shore, and guitarist, vocalist and writer Pat Butler have been building mass these last few years, and with this latest effort shows that the Hahas once again have a gift for dark, menacing, and thrilling grooves and for pushing themselves further. The six songs on I Am Not A Happy Person are intelligent, impressively bold, and decidedly multidimensional.
"Your Girl" kicks the EP off in impressive fashion with a dark, killer guitar riff, boldly placed keyboards, and an arena ready chorus that suggests there's some serious ambition at work here, and taste. "Black Mud" picks up on that with some of the most focused playing I've heard locally this year from the hard rock side of town. The Sabbath meets Black Keys riffs and crunchy, heavy breaks work perfectly because this band is tight, and Butler's charismatic vocals float nicely on top of all of it, including the tastefully deployed and executed obligatory wails.
"Tiresias," the centerpiece of the album, seamlessly folds a little Nick Cave into the proceedings. Butler shines, alternating between a Cave croon, a crystalline falsetto, and his patented power rock wail, while the rest of the band also shows their versatility through a series of change ups that give the song a properly epic feel that showcases their capacity for scale and grandeur. Indeed, the song as a whole is a bold gesture, and it pays off magnificently. But the menace and darkness is never far away on I Am Not A Happy Person, and "Black Tar Heroin" is as dark and nasty as it sounds, with the band finding another satisfyingly evil groove to drive. If "Tiresias" nimbly flirts with prog, "Black Tar Heroin" is it's opposite number, straight ahead, devastatingly intense... and a sharp and pleasing juxtaposition.
The sunny and loose "Annabel Lee" at first seems almost out of place and almost off putting at first glance until the Hahas flip it upside down, crushing the bridge and introducing welcome chaos into the previously twee and swinging ballad. Even with mild grunge notes and a knob twisting conclusion "Dead on Halloween" brings I Am Not A Happy Person to a satisfying conclusion courtesy art-rock death canyon blues guitars, a clever and apropos sound clip, and yet more excellent keyboard work from Phil Shore, whose bold presence lifts the entire EP to another level, bridging the garage and psych rock aspects of the band with the bold, early 70's piano driven rock of Leon Russell and (early) Elton John. Sleepy Hahas are a mightily ambitious band with a lot going on, things abundantly clear on their latest effort, and that's why I Am Not A Happy Person is our Album of the Week- that and the fact that it drops today, which means you should get on this right away.
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