Aye, it was all post-rock round here when Fridge were kids. Quickspace Supersport played in Camden every night, there were always plenty of German records from the '70s to discover and there was even word, from over in the holy city of Chicago, that it was OK to use computers, too.
Boy wonders of the UK scene, Fridge always were, in truth, smarter and more eclectic than the average po-faced post-rock operative. Hence some barmy and brilliant fusions of live instruments with cosmic jazz and two-step rhythms on their last album, 'Eph'. And hence the acclaim justifiably aimed at their multi-instrumentalist Kieran Hebden for his R&B-tinged DJing gigs and electronic-based solo project, Four Tet.
All told, then, we might've expected 'Happiness', Fridge's fourth album, to be a more committed excursion into club culture. But predictability has never been the band's strongest point. 'Happiness' features nine fantastically-detailed, delicately-constructed and warm-sounding pieces that are far too slippery to fall into neat genre parameters.
The best way to describe these mesmeric tunes is to refer to their helpful titles.The first one is called 'Melodica And Trombone' and features, well, melodica and trombone, along with the mass of jingling, bell-infested percussion that is, perhaps, Fridge's most recognisable trademark nowadays. Establishing this simple modus operandi, 'Happiness' gracefully flogs it into the ground, from the clicking delirium of 'Drum Machines And Glockenspiels' to the relatively rocking 'Drums Bass Sonics And Edits'.
The lack of adornment might seem pretentious, but in fact it's just the opposite. Fridge's greatest strength is to draw on theoretically complex music Japanese avant-gardist Nobukazu Takemura seems to be a favourite here and render it bright, naive and utterly charming. That's 'Happiness' in a nutshell; an album that defies stereotype by living up to its title perfectly.
