Happy Brithday - Happy Birthday (Sub Pop)

All hail Brattleboro, Vermont's latest offering of bedroom pop and teenage heartthrob, Happy Birthday.  Their Sub Pop debut, which features all the ingredients to make up a complication of 70s throwaway glam singles minus the bloated front, has been making waves within the sea of new bands that come off as nothing more than new twee with a sugary aftertaste of grunge.  Imagine what the pitiful reading of poetry by a loveless high school student might sound like accompanied alongside hyperactive guitar licks, and then you can begin to fathom what half an hour with Happy Birthday really entails.  Though ephemeral singles like "Girls FM" and "Cracked" might have originally been causes for excitement, as a whole, the LP is difficult to digest due to its uneasy shifting and departures that more often than not lead to nowhere.  Change within a song is a sure way to keep your listeners engaged but carelessly throwing in fidgety variations just for the sake of covering the monotony of an arrangement makes it easy for one to lose interest when initial expectations are so high.