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Happy Abandon release new album ‘Facepaint’!
"...musically it could be Happy Abandon's most confident album yet."
- Clash Magazine
"...Indie nostalgia, with a sugary, unique twist and Pop sensibility." - Paste Magazine
Happy Abandon’s sophomore album Facepaint is out now via Schoolkids Records and available to stream on Spotify and buy on iTunes.
A collection of heartfelt, melancholic melodies that simmer under the surface toward an ever increasing crescendo of orchestral indie rock, Facepaint is a wonderful sonic journey from the first note to the last.
The band released Heavy Lines as their final single prior to the album dropping, with Clash Magazine premiering the track on their site. You can stream and embed Heavy Lines via the Happy Abandon Soundcloud page.
This followed previous single Severed Seams, picked up by the likes of The Revue, Impose Magazine and For The Rabbits, which is also available to stream on the Happy Abandon Soundcloud page.
Despite featuring songs about loss, Peter Vance (vocals & guitar) is quick to point out that Facepaint is not a breakup album. He explains “if the album were to have a subject, it would be the relationship a person has to loss and loneliness, which can manifest itself through breakups, homelessness, familial abandonment, and death”. These relationships provide the outline for Facepaint, from the emotions they conjure, to the settings in which they exist and the face paint we all hide behind to make those heartbreaks a little more palatable. Vance’s lead vocal soars throughout, combined with powerful lyrics and a dynamic string arrangement to create cinematic pop music at its best.
The band released the first single If I Stare from their forthcoming album last year, which premiered on Paste Magazine who described the track as "a blissful and enchanting bed of music".
Forming in early 2015, Happy Abandon’s Peter Vance, Justin Ellis (bass & vocals) and Jake Waits (percussion & vocals) met at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Within a few weeks of performing together, they worked their way onto bills at local shows before taking off to tour the east coast of the US and Canada. It was at SXSW that the band initially hooked up future label head Stephen Judge, playing multiple slots at his annual SXSW party. From there, a relationship was born that would eventually lead to Judge’s offering Happy Abandon a recording contract via his freshly rebranded label Schoolkids Records.
Happy Abandon’s album Facepaint is out now via Schoolkids Records stream on Spotify and buy on iTunes.