Well. It’s taken me a week to pull my brain out of a jet-lag fug, but finally I’ve managed to find a Brooklyn-based band, and semi-justify my presence in New York.

OK, so Happy Lives were pretty much the very first local band I stumbled upon, but I’m going to chalk this one up to serendipity.

That’s because Happy Lives are a great band (aren’t they all?), replete with songs filled with the kind of sounds that reach out of the speaker and shake you warmly by the throat.

Slacks and Slippers is crunchier than a fresh tower of poppadoms, and more jagged than a freshly demolished tower of poppadoms.

Woeful curry-based analogies aside, here’s a song from a band that have that rarest of qualities: clarity.

Their songs may be muddy, grimy and the resonance of a bag of spanners, but they are also laser-focussed in their execution and direction. This all bodes very well. Great stuff.

MORE: happylives.bandcamp.com