Electric Soul Unity

Chronique

Bay Area guitar band Happy Diving announced themselves in 2014 with a self-released four-song cassette recorded by Jack Shirley (Joyce Manor, Deafheaven). From their start, they set up camp in the massively fuzzed indie rock realm pioneered by bands like Dinosaur Jr. and Weezer, albeit with a lower-fi aesthetic. Later that year, their debut full-length, Big World, further revealed their intentions with ten new songs of barely controlled feedback and cacophonous thunder pop. Two years later, they've joined the roster of San Diego's Topshelf Records to release their sophomore effort, Electric Soul Unity. Reunited again with Shirley at his Palo Alto-based Atomic Garden studio, Happy Diving remain firmly in their bailiwick, delivering melodic pop-based songwriting weighed down by 20 anvils' worth of heavy iron sludge. Opening with "Bigger World" -- its title a wry nod to their debut -- bandleader Matt Berry and his cohorts dish out chunky midtempo riffs with an amiable stoner tunefulness. Faster cuts like "Don't Be Afraid of Love" and "Lost My Way" follow a similar tack with melodies that don't quite jump out, but rather invite the listener to come find their hooks. Outside of a couple slow, dirgey cuts and the nicely crafted acoustic ballad "Unknown Feeling," Electric Soul Unity suffers a bit too much from its own overbearing unity. Nearly every track begins with the same twin squalls of feedback before punishing an already subtle melody under a bruising fist of similar-sounding lo-fi rock. There's an obvious power pop influence in their sound, but Happy Diving lack the delicacy and melodic nuance of forebears like Teenage Fanclub who tempered their own ample fuzz and feedback use with a more deliberate attention to the song itself. They've got the raw might and power down, but it just doesn't do these songs quite enough justice.

© Timothy Monger /TiVo