#35: RÖYKSOPP
“Happy Up Here”
from the album Junior
Released: March 2009
Imagine you’re coming home after a very long and potentially dangerous adventure. You’ve beaten all the odds, saw your enemies off, and now it’s time to return to what you know in your bones to be perfect. Back to home.
You take the motorway turnoff, view the familiar buildings and junctions as they approach you, speed off down the suburban A-road towards the eyes and heart of the city itself. The sun is shining and you are in guardedly jovial mood.
You get out of whatever vehicle you’ve taken to reach there and bow to the buildings, and perhaps to certain people if they’re there, as you reach them. Are you staying there?
There is this record shop on Fulham Broadway and three months after you’ve finally come together, one Friday teatime you walk into it and they are playing this record and you both love it immediately. You recognise the George Clinton sample being used at the beginning, and the fact that (!) this song, barely two-and-three-quarter minutes in length, makes you laugh at its capabilities for instant recognition of feelings and attachments, including to one’s favourite records, while its browning shades of autumn render you a shivering disciple to the song’s glacial but unavoidably spiritual iteration of non-manic pop thrills.
Yes, you’re happy up here, because up here is home, and this theme for a great city (because all cities are, by definition, great) articulates home’s naturalised magic.
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