Album Reviews

On their fourth release in three years, Happy Diving go all out. “Electric Soul Unity” comes with twelve songs that are fuzzed out beyond belief. At first that’s pretty much all your ears will pick up on. But then you notice the drums that keep everything together, guitar solos that wrestle their way through the fuzz and sound like J Mascis wrote them along with the kind of slurred, blurred and not all that happy sounding vocals that will make you think of… well, J Mascis.

These songs are catchy though. It didn’t take all that long before I found myself nodding along and showing off my air guitar skills (limited as they are) during the solos. Listening to “Bigger World” or lead single “Holy Ground”, I imagine these guys to be loud as fuck live. But they prove to be equally effective during the mellow “Head Spell” and the acoustic delicacy of “Unknown Feeling”.

Apart from those two tracks, Happy Diving mostly stick to holding on to their fuzz pedals for dear life. While this can make it difficult to tell the songs apart, there’s no denying they released another solid album with “Electric Soul Unity”.