Album Review: Allie X – Happiness Is Going To Get You
2 min read
Allie X, born Alexandra Ashley Hughes, has spent the last decade carving out a peculiar, theatrical corner of alt-pop – sardonic, melodically sharp and endlessly inventive. On Happiness Is Going To Get You, she leans into a softer, piano-forward palette of tracks and even introduces a new persona (the so-called ‘Infant Marie’) to frame the record’s flourishes and wry confessions.
The album opens with Is Anybody Out There?, a patient, slightly haunting opener, vulnerable in its lyrics but tidy and deliberate in its musical arrangement. 7th Floor flips the mood into a buoyant two minute hook, there’s a whistling, almost indie-pop bounce that feels deceptively positive while the words keep their teeth. Down Season slows the tempo, wrapping warm harp-like touches around lyrics about complacency and small betrayals while Reunite is a mid-tempo pep talk – bassy, bright and stubbornly optimistic.
The mini interlude, A Glitch In Marie, is a beautiful twenty six second mechanical sigh that segues into the title track, Happiness Is Gonna Get You, where Allie pares back to piano and lets a bittersweet melody do the heavy lifting. It’s intimate in a way her earlier, more maximal records rarely were. I Hope You Hear This Song is very much classic Allie X mischief – a short, sugar-coated revenge fantasy masquerading as a radio-ready ear worm. As the track plays, it evolves into a nostalgic sound with the melody transitioning into something not all that dissimilar to The Verve’s Bittersweet Symphony. Uncle Lenny meanwhile is a storytelling detour, funny, slightly grotesque and anchored by characterful vocal delivery. The brief It Gets Better (It’s Worse Than Ever) then functions as a palate cleanser before wrapping up with an emotional last three tracks.
Learn To Cry starts us off as a patient, piano-led confession that lets Allie’s soprano hover over aching minor chords. Stay Green and It’s Just Light close things on wistful, sunlit notes with It’s Just Light taking influence from Massive Attack’s Teardrop through ambience and rhythm. If Allie X’s last album, Girl With No Face, showcased her claustrophobic, synth-heavy self-interrogations, Happiness Is Going To Get You is the gentler flip side: less jagged, more theatrical in a chamber-pop way and quietly devastating in its simpler moments.
