About

Recorded and mixed in situ at Lodge Room by engineer Bryce Gonzales with a custom-made analog mixer and Nagra stereo tape recorder, Happy Today captures a bright moment during dark times. As Parker shares: “2025 was a very difficult year for me and my family. Dealing with being displaced from the Eaton fires for eight months, and the kind of toll that instability took on my family’s mental health and general outlook, coupled with Donald Trump being back in office and basically making life miserable for everyone… There was a lot of sadness and despair. But feeling the sense of community that we created with our concert, and later hearing the recording, seeing the beautiful footage that had been shot and the photographs of such joy to be back in that space and to be making music again: It was a very happy moment. So I called the record Happy Today. It’s meant to be a statement of joy.”

The past two years have been productive and busy as ever for Parker, who has long been a prominent player within a wide-range of music communities, jazz and beyond. In 2025 alone, he released new music and toured with his long-standing experimental rock band Tortoise, and brought the ETA IVtet in for an NPR Tiny Desk performance. Additionally, Parker and two other members of the IVet — Butterss and Johnson — are featured on Flea's solo debut album released March 27 on Nonesuch Records. The album, Honora, also was produced by Johnson.

Happy Today is the ETA IVtet’s first recording made outside of the now-shuttered, widely-beloved Los Angeles micro-club ETA. Part laboratory, part low-stakes proving ground, ETA was where the band’s  collective sound coalesced over the course of a storied seven-year Monday night residency that yielded two critically-acclaimed records — 2022’s Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy and 2024’s The Way Out of Easy.

With Happy Today, that sound — honed in such an intimate setting — is scaled up for a much larger audience and space at Lodge Room. But the essential formula remains the same, and has the same hypnotic, deeply-tuned listening effect. The almost alchemical musical communication creates a feeling of connection not only between the band members but also between the band and their audience – an ongoing trust exercise that invites listeners to become part of the exchange, and experience the joy of deep listening. — (via Label)

—

The first thing you notice in the opening moments of Happy Today is the amount of space. Hard-panned to the left and bathed in room tone, Jeff Parker’s round, resonant guitar notes have a decay tail long enough to activate the snare wires in Jay Bellerose’s kit. When Anna Butterss strikes their upright bass, the sound spreads like ink spilled on linen; when listening in headphones, you can feel it vibrate in your temples, and it’s heavy enough to trick you into thinking the ground must have shaken as well. Josh Johnson sustains a long, golden drone on his saxophone, and when he captures a loop of it, it’s as if a second Josh Johnson takes the cue and doubles the note from 10 feet away. Three minutes into “Like Swimwear,” as the ETA IVtet comes into its power, you can almost map the players’ stage positions and the dimensions of the venue, as the reflections suggest a high ceiling and considerable distance between its walls.

Happy Today is just as remarkably hypnotic as the IVtet’s previous documents, but it’s perhaps more impressive to hear how commanding they’ve become as a unit. On both sidelong tracks, they take their time to establish a vibe, each member finding the right time to add another layer. “Like Swimwear” starts with Parker plucking a delicate figure, eventually sustaining certain notes to build a delicate, droning chord. Johnson follows suit, but plays a dueling figure, as Butterss and Bellerose methodically add more accents into the rhythmic backbone. Eventually, the two fully lock together, allowing Parker and Johnson the space to wriggle around, sometimes finding the cracks and crevices in the motorik churn, other times enveloping it in clouds of pure tone. Johnson experiments with chorus and reverb effects, giving his saxophone the impression of fading in and out of view. — (via Pitchfork)

↓
Label: International Anthem Recording Company
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album
Released: 2026
Genre: Jazz, Folk, World, & Country

File under: International Anthem Recording Company
⦿