Hymns from Nineveh (Denmark) – Happy Life (single/future album track)

I have been known to be attracted by band names and Hymns from Nineveh is one of them. There’s such a contrast between hymns, which we associate with Christianity and Nineveh which is fundamentally known as an Assyrian city, once the largest in world, and sited close to the modern day city of Mosul in Iraq.

In fact Nineveh has had Christian influences over the centuries and if I remember rightly it was the location of the archeological dig that Father Merrin was involved in as he was called away to confront for the second and last time the demon Pazuzu, which had taken residence in the 12-year old Regan MacNeil thousands of miles away in Washington in the book and film The Exorcist.

(I just had to get that in, it’s still the best film ever made).

Anyway, to cut to the chase, there’s dichotomy in the band’s name so I was expecting it in the song and wasn’t disappointed.

There’s usually a clear dividing line in music between frivolity and melancholy. You can’t really have a light, floaty sad song or a miserable, heavy optimistic one; that would be a clear case of an oxymoron.

But Hymns of Nineveh manage the former with ease in ‘Happy Life’.

The song concerns the Covid pandemic, which, having taken a break from the songwriting swirl for a while has made a return, just as everyone is gearing up for the arrival of the Monkeypox.

It’s a love song about moving from one place to another, inspired by the pandemic years, when founder member Jonas Petersen and his wife had the time to examine what they really wanted from life. They concluded that it was time to change their outlook – to move out of Copenhagen and steer towards the coastline of North Zealand.

(I misread that as New Zealand at first – now that would be dramatic!)

It is a “bittersweet feeling” according to Jonas, who has experienced it several times before.

Consequently, ‘Happy Life’ hangs somewhere between the joy and the pain in the (sorrowful) journey towards happiness.

If that sounds convoluted, the song explains it well as it verges between what you might expect to hear on a children’s TV show during the summer holidays to keep the kids entertained, backed by the steel drums-like sound of a Caribbean ensemble, and with a delightful piano melody in the more mundane, if not actually miserable verses.

And the bridge is what a bridge should be but rarely is – a departure from the main melody and one that transports you to a different place altogether.

I’ve been struggling to place that piano melody. I’ve heard something very similar to it before and I can’t get away from Choir of Young Believers’ ‘Hollow Talk’, which places ‘Happy Life’ in very good company.

They’ve been around a long time although this is my first exposure to them. It won’t be the last.

‘Happy Life’ is the final single from the album ‘Parabler’, Hymns from Nineveh’s seventh full-length album, which will be released on October 25th. Is that wordplay on ‘Parable’? Just wondering.

Find them on:

Website: https://www.hymns.dk/