The Aliens - The Happy Song Video

The Aliens
The Happy Song
Video Stream

Sometimes a pop song swaggers with such innocent brilliance that it bludgeons your senses like a right-hook. 'The Happy Song' is the new single from The Aliens, and it does just that.

The Aliens are Gordon Anderson, John Maclean and Robin Jones, and between them they have been responsible for some of the most enthralling British music of the last decade. School friends Gordon and John met Robin at Edinburgh College of Art, and musical collaborations soon followed. The trio were all founding members of The Beta Band, under which moniker John and Robin spent 8 years touring, recording, DJing, making films and wearing jumpsuits with fluorescent piping.

For Gordon however, things weren't quite so simple. Whilst his band mates were in London signing their record contract with EMI, Gordon was entering a Scottish psychiatric institution, looking for help with the mental illness that was making his life impossible. It has taken Gordon the best part of a decade to leave such places behind, but he has been out of hospital and off medication for a while now. He's released the odd record under the name Lone Pigeon, and worked with his brothers Kenny (aka King Creosote) and Ian (aka Pip Dylan). The Aliens frontman, of all people, isn't about to start spouting forth about tortured geniuses, but he does think that his mental problems have helped his creativity. How else, perhaps to explain a library of 'close to 5000' self-written songs?

The Aliens are, at last, a version of a band that shoulda been, never was, then almost coulda been, but all of this seems unimportant the minute you lose yourself in their bottomless bag of psychedelically inclined rock and acid dipped electronics. Their first release, the Alienoid Starmonica EP burst forth with a freedom of spirit and a certainty of intent that immediately set them apart from the current crop of guitar slingers. Their new single, 'The Happy Song', pushes things even further, clearly demonstrating that an instinct for infectious songwriting lies beneath the layers of sonic space dust, as Gordon belts out a life affirming mantra to the sound of a band of Martians having a knees up round a piano on Pluto.