Modern Guilt know how to put on a show. On ‘How To Buy Happiness’, the groovy and slick bassline from this London based alternative rock group has you bopping your head in eager anticipation. It has this Western-esque feeling to it, an outback and desert landscape that pervades in the video’s background only adding to that unique tenseness you’d expect from a shoot out in the wild west. But it’s in that riff that kicks into next gear when he sings ‘If I had the money‘ that you start to really jump to attention. The whole arrangement is exciting and electric, bustling with a grounded grittiness in the style but an overall desire to flesh out something just unequivocally exciting from back to front. It’s just so god damned funky a piece, simply oozing swagger and suaveness from every bit of the arrangement.
Produced by Mikey Buckley, ‘How To Buy Happiness’ sounds like a Western and narrates a rather aimless and slightly pitiful saga of longing for that which won’t give you what you seek. With a chorus line that basically boils down to a belief in money as the source and be all end all for happiness, the song has you following that path and chasing that misguided belief with a groove that’s impossible to not enjoy.