Charles Spearin is a mustached Canadian man who would be better known as a part of both Broken Social Scene and Do Make Say Think, two bands that I am not very appreciative of. Imagine my shock, then, that I enjoy his The Happiness Project so much.

The idea is simple: create songs based around bits of ordinary speech. The whole album is like this, but he has some fun with it on certain tracks, like Vittoria, which made me burst into laughter the first time I heard it. I was going to do a DoubleTake! today and post the song Vittoria as well but I just don't feel it's really necessary. If this track doesn't inspire you to check out the rest of the album, nothing will.

In his own words:

These are my neighbours. My wife and I have two little kids and live downtown Toronto. In the summertime, all the kids in the neighbourhood play outside together and everyone is out on their porch enjoying each other’s company, telling stories and sharing thoughts. A year or so ago, I began inviting some of them over to the house for a casual interview vaguely centered around the subject of happiness. In some cases we never broached the subject directly but nonetheless my friends began to call it my 'Happiness Project.' After each interview I would listen back to the recording for moments that were interesting in both meaning and melody. By meaning I mean the thoughts expressed, by melody I mean the cadence and inflection that give the voice a singsong quality. It has always been interesting to me how we use sounds to convey concepts. Normally, we don’t pay any attention to the movement of our lips and tongue, and the rising and falling of our voices as we toss our thoughts back and forth, just as we don’t pay attention to the curl and swing of the letters as we read. I wanted to see if I could blur the line between speaking and singing and write music based on these accidental melodies. So, I had some musician friends play these neighborhood melodies as close as they could on different instruments (the tenor saxophone as Mrs. Morris, the harp as Marisa, etc.) and then I arranged them as though they were songs. The result is a beautiful and unique collection of songs, blissfully blurring the lines between jazz, folk, indie rock, and inspirational improvisation.

This song feeds, of course, into my recent blatherings, which I will spare you. (Really, I just deleted 2 paragraphs of blathering.)

It's just amazing to me how good this song feels. It's not my style, whatever my style is, and I guess that's because it's jazzy? I don't know, but it feels good. Each section of it is a minor revelation of feeling, bird chirps and horns. If Spearin was shooting for happiness, I think he caught it right in the face. Good job!

Enjoy your Saturday! And every other day, for that matter!