Deep Down Happy

Frenetic fun and socially conscious. I am a sucker for British isles dialects talk singing.

Indie rock that heralds back to Iggy Pop or David Bowie. These guys definately studied the Bowie Playbook. You can definately hear that these guys must have been influenced heavily by him. Once i got used to their eccentricities, I really enjoyed this album. Thanks OP for the recommendation. I never would have discovered this without this generator. This is the stuff I love to find on here.

Favourite songs: Going Soft, Camel Crew, Long Hot Summer, Kutcher, Fishing, Here It Comes Again, Lander, Here's the Thing, The Races, Born Sugar, Stations of the Cross

Least favourite songs: none. This album is great!

5/5

A cool jangling indie rock feel, much like Phoenix or Bloc Party.

I was originally going to give this a 3, I found the vocalist to be quite annoying and lyrically pretty cringey at times, but this band has one huge advantage: hooks.

I was expecting this to be Windmill era art punk given the year it came out and the style of the first two songs, but they're more indie rock later on. They initially reminded me a lot of the band shame, I think primarily because of the vocalist as well as the punkiness they have in some of the songs, but as the album develops they seem more similar to Viagra Boys mainly due to their lyrical content and because of the dancey sound they go for later in the album. I think Viagra Boys have a better sense of humor and lean into the lyrical cringe better than Sports Team does though. I also see a few other reviewers have made the same connection that I have with Viagra Boys.

The third song is where Deep Down Happy really starts to flourish, at this point the album introduces dance punk into the repertoire. Now I feel like this band is a bit mediocre across the board, with one exception, and as I said before it's that they're fucking incredible at making hooks, specifically angular guitar based hooks. The complaints I have a singer also disappear on these songs, his overly quirky voice fits the poppier material very well. I really can't overstate just how good they are at hooks, they should really be making pop music (guitar based obviously), and after this I'm probably going to check out their other albums to see if they ever dip their toes in poppier music.

The more indie and rockier stuff is unfortunately bang average. There's a lot more of it towards the end and I think the albums has a significant drop in quality as a result. Still, I think Sports Team have great potential.

Should it be in the main list: No

Top 3 songs: Going Soft, Camel Crew, Born Sugar

Alt rock’s back. Clean fun, but not breaking the mold for me

Did we just forget how to pace albums? This starts great, with a kind of sly wit and intelligence that only seems to have emerged over the past decade, but it gradually loses its way. I think that this kind of acerbic songwriting outstays its welcome pretty quickly — Pulp, who are the progenitors of this genre, made it work by including more variables on "This is Hardcore." "Deep Down Happy" isn't bad, but it either needs to be shorter or have more variety.

Really like these kinds of monotone vocals, and I was actually kind of sad when he would go for something more akin to the Darkness of all things. The punkier stuff was way better than the rock heavy stuff, but the whole album was objectively just okay, but I personally quite enjoyed my time. Nice to have a shorter album, and there are some bangers on here.

I had this album on repeat when it came out a few years ago. Really good example of the current U.K. indie revival.