The Top 20 Albums of 2011 - #8 - The Sami Sisters: Happy Heartbreak

The Top 20 Albums of 2011

#8 The Sami Sisters: Happy Heartbreak!

Words by Dirk Calloway

Preface: iTunes tells me I listened to around 83 hours of music that was released in 2011. A month or so after the year ended, I felt ready to compile a list of The Top 20 Albums of the year. Until the weekend just been, I'd been good and had published a review of one album per day. I'll get back on the horse again today, to make sure we're done in a week's time. Today we're up to #8, and we've only got seven more to go. Catch up on the other 12 entries here.

The Sami Sisters' debut album is a stunner. The artwork's gorgeous, sonically it's top-knotch, and it's the best New Zealand-made pop music of this decade. The record's called Happy Heartbreak!, and it lives up to its name. Thematically, a lot of the songs dwell on the loss of love, but many are delivered in an upbeat and "happy" way. This is female pop that is lyrically infused with its own enthusiasm. Check out their thumping ballad, Cry:

The music video kills off the men in its cast in less than 2 minutes. The rest of the dinner party has no choice but to join in with the band, who sings "things like you come and things like you go" in a mariachi-like chant. The song builds to a soaring "crryyyyyyyy" and, slowly, layers and layers of instrumentation are added on top of each other. It's a strong cut, though its a cut that has borrowed its strength liberally from the back catalogue of The Turtles (see Happy Together, and Elenore for a direct comparison). To be fair, The Turtles are the masters of this sort of clompy and choppy pop ballad, so it was a wise choice to base the tune on their style.
If you're worried Happy Heartbreak is a derivative mish-mash by a bunch of musical magpies, put those fairs to rest. Check out the above song Take It Or Break It. It's as inventive, danceable and interesting as the Kiwi classic by Bressa Creeting Cake, Palm Singing. This is no coincidence: the 'Cake' in the aforementioned group is Edmund "Cake" McWilliams and he produced Happy Heartbreak!. I don't mean to take anything away from The Sami Sisters themselves, because they've proven to be great lyricists and musicians, but this record has just as much of Cake's DNA in it as it does theirs. Luckily for the rest of the world, the resulting baby is a beautiful one. Check out the best track from the bunch, Oh Boy:

The achievements of this song are too numerous to mention. In my mind, Oh Boy is the best sounding tune of 2011. It's been mixed to perfection by Tchad Blake - the dude responsible for the best sounding album of this decade: The Black Keys' Brothers. It sounds good in every environment I've played it in. Each time I do, someone asks "who's that? This is cool." And they're right: this is damned cool. I can't praise this album enough. It's been produced to an inch of its life and it still feels raw, vibrant and fresh. Its lyrics are hilarious. The harmonies are glorious and sound like a group of sisters having a blast. A song like Oh Boy is so well written and performed that it puts the rest of the New Zealand industry to shame. I wish there were more albums out there like this gem. You can buy it from Bandcamp, Marbecks, or iTunes.


Thanks for reading folks, be sure to check in tomorrow for the next review. It involves one of the key members of today's album... hopefully that doesn't give it away ahead of time! Click this link here if you want to catch up on any of the reviews you've missed.