Charles Spearin - The Happiness Project

The Happiness Project is the brainchild of Charles Spearin, founding member of Broken Social Scene and Do Make Say Think. The album's concept is so unique that it has the potential either to succeed or fall flat on its face. Each song on the record takes for its rhythmic basis the cadences of Spearin's neighbours' speech as they respond to his questions on the nature of happiness.

Opener Mrs. Morris sets the tone for the rest of the record, with its narrator's brief elaboration on her belief that "happiness is love", clumsily mimicked by a saxophone and interrupted by Spearin's own backgrounded interjections. While the interlinking patterns are initially disorienting and almost comic, once the listener accustoms themselves to the bizarreness of the medium, the ideas of community spirit and innocent joy which form the backbone of the Project reveal themselves through the interviewees' responses and Spearin's ragged band of collaborators' multifaceted musical backdrop.

A record with the potential to be affecting and challenging, but one which is almost guaranteed, by very nature of its individuality, to polarise.