I thought that Happily Deceiving Culture was going to be some sort of Negativland-inspired pop-culture sampling mishmash. As usually happens when I try to pre-judge a band based on its name or album title, I was wrong.

Tom Daily (a.k.a. Tom Counihan) was the guitarist for The Smoking Popes and the singer/songwriter for Chicago's Not Rebecca. Happily Deceiving Culture finds him in solo mode -- he played all of the instruments (guitar, bass, drums, synths) on these 11 songs. In a classic "play all the instruments on your solo CD" move, he also recorded the songs on an 8-track recorder in his bedroom.

Overall, I'm quite impressed with Happily Deceiving Culture. I was surprised to learn that Daily played all the instruments himself -- the recordings feel spontaneous, but also sound pretty tight and well-recorded. That's not an easy combination to pull off by yourself in your bedroom! The songs are sweet and fun, even though the lyrics tend toward the melancholy. The music is mostly simple, straightforward and guitar-based, although a few tunes, like "I Have a Vampire" and "Looking" benefit from the space-noodle-synth sounds that suddenly pop up in the mix. Daily's voice is the real strong point here though: it's slightly but not obnoxiously nasal, a bit twangy, sincere but non-whiny, even when he's at his most depressing. I like that!

The lyrics on Happily Deceiving Culture are another strong point. Although they're pretty much all about being depressed or knowing people who are depressed, they don't really seem depressing to me. Maybe it's the music that keeps them perky, or maybe it's just that Daily keeps the writing simple and clean, which makes me hear the lyrics as descriptions of life's situations rather than mopey complaints. Whatever the case, with lines like "she is the kind of girl / who waits until her birthday's through / to tell you she is leaving you" Daily manages to keep me listening.