Leroy Clampitt Finds The Brighter Side On ‘Get Happy’

Leroy Clampitt’s Get Happy opens with him announcing: “I’m going to die one day.” About ten seconds later, you realise this record has absolutely no interest in sounding miserable about it.

Instead, ‘I’m Going To Die’ bounces along with a bright, retro-pop feel, turning a fairly bleak thought into something warm and strangely reassuring. The song eventually becomes a love song, with Clampitt worrying less about death itself and more about having the right person beside him when it eventually arrives. That sets the tone pretty quickly.

Clampitt writes about death, exhaustion, getting older and the memories that stick around long after they probably should have faded. The clever part is that the production rarely lets any of it feel particularly heavy. The melodies stay light, the arrangements keep moving, and some of the saddest lyrics almost slip past unnoticed.

It makes Get Happy incredibly easy to live with. Put it on while making breakfast, driving somewhere with nowhere urgent to be or doing very little at all, and it works. Sometimes that is exactly the appeal. Sometimes it is the problem.

Clampitt has spent years writing and producing for artists including Lily Allen, Madison Beer, Sabrina Carpenter and Laufey. Get Happy is his first solo album and the first release through his own Sorry Susan Records, giving him the chance to make something without another artist sitting at the centre of it.

For all that freedom, Clampitt hasn’t come back with some mad producer experiment. His thoughts can get strange, but the music around them remains remarkably comfortable. ‘Easy Daisy’ settles into the softer side nicely, while ‘Your Boy’ gets hazier without disturbing the album’s easy pace. There are moments across the middle where songs become almost too comfortable, settling into the record’s rhythm without leaving much behind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCh9Z3ikz1U

Nobody is going to finish Get Happy wondering what the hell they have just heard. That is not really the point. ‘Sick Day’ is where Clampitt messes with the formula a little. Written around the feeling of being overwhelmed by work and longing for the simplicity of taking a sick day as a kid, it gives the record a slightly sharper edge. There is still humour in the idea, but underneath it sits a very adult kind of exhaustion.

‘Charlie’s Interlude’ quietly marks a shift. The production never suddenly becomes miserable, but the second half lets those heavier thoughts sit closer to the surface. That becomes especially clear on ‘Ricky Martin’, one of the album’s strongest moments.

Clampitt looks back at listening to Ricky Martin before school and the ridiculous intensity of an early crush. It is hazy and nostalgic without forcing too much sentimentality out of the memory, and its chorus is one of the moments on Get Happy that properly follows you after the track ends. Memorability is probably the album’s biggest weakness.

There is nothing particularly bad here, but a few tracks settle so comfortably into their own groove that they disappear almost as quickly as they arrive. Get Happy is at its best when Clampitt’s odd little observations cut through that softness and give you something to grab onto.

‘Puppy Dog’ and ‘I Used To Be A Tire’ sit comfortably beside songs about mortality, love and burnout, all treated with roughly the same curiosity. Clampitt never separates serious thoughts from silly ones, and the album is better for it. He also performs most of the instruments and vocals himself, but never treats the record like an excuse to show off. For someone with his production CV, Get Happy is surprisingly uninterested in proving how technically clever he is.

Ten tracks in, ‘The Brighter Side Of Life’ gives the album title its clearest explanation. The piano-led love song works through questions that do not really have answers before landing somewhere much simpler: sometimes another person being there is enough to make life feel a bit easier. On its own, that could easily become a little sugary. Here, after all the death, burnout and nostalgia, it earns the sentiment.

That is probably Get Happy at its most convincing. It never suggests that mortality, exhaustion or getting older disappear because you have found a catchy melody. Clampitt just refuses to let those things dominate everything around them. Closing track ‘Good Night’ sends things out without reaching for some huge final statement. It is soft, sincere and completely in keeping with a record that never seems desperate to prove its importance. It isn’t the strangest or most memorable debut you’ll hear this year. Get Happy is not trying to push indie-pop somewhere new, and there are moments when its easy nature slips a little too close to becoming forgettable. But it is also hard to dislike.

Clampitt has made a debut full of dark thoughts that somehow refuses to become a dark record. Death becomes a love song. Burnout becomes something you can nod along to. Childhood memories are allowed to be ridiculous without becoming meaningless.

Get Happy is Sunday-morning music with Monday-morning thoughts, and that contradiction is exactly where its charm sits.