Wake Me Up isn't an earth-shaking, world-changing, paradigm-shattering album. Your grandchildren won't be talking about it a hundred years from now. You won't be hailed as a prophet for being one of the first to discover it.

It is, however, a tremendously enjoyable way to spend forty minutes -- and really, that's all we should reasonably expect from any album, isn't it?

Sort of like a Danish version of the Housemartins with a smidgen of Squeeze rolled in, Embellish deliver hummable hooks, plenty of nonsense-choruses ("bump-ba-da-da-bump-ba" and so forth) and lyrical phrase-turns that you'll be humming/muttering to yourself in short order. If I was the sort of person who could get away with blatant acts of unabashed glee, I'd stow Wake Me Up in the discman and go running around in a big, grassy field, singing along to dreamy songs like "You" and simpering like a village idiot. Luckily for all of you -- especially those of you who live near big, grassy fields -- I'm not that sort of person.

Unlike a lot of current European pop, Embellish don't beat you over the head with jetsetting international moodiness. There's a distinct and refreshing lack of burbling analog keyboards, bossa-nova-inspired tempos and shibuya-kei-esque sweetness. In fact, if you avoided looking at press releases (not a problem for the average music buyer) and didn't acknowledge the country of ancestry implied by the band members' names, you could easily type Embellish as a bunch of pop-loving kids from Liverpool or Boston. Anthemic tunes like the choppy "Wake Me Up!!!", which combines sugary-sweet girl/confident boy vocals and surprisingly robust guitar licks, will drive home the resemblance.

In the end, Wake Me Up is a simple, cheerful album with no delusions of grandeur. It carries no philosophical payload, boasts no "big name" production talent and isn't the latest work from former members of a band that released one arguably seminal album two years ago. You don't need that. What you need -- what everybody needs, really -- is a few sunny, responsibility-free summer days, and a suitable soundtrack to which you can enjoy them. And here it is. You may not remember Wake Me Up in a year, and its most hummable moments may be gone from your lips before the trees all lose their leaves...but you'll remember being happy.