Happiness Is Going To Get You

A year after her 2024 synth-shocked opus *Girl with No Face*, LA-via-Toronto pop shapeshifter Allie X has reinvented herself once again. Composed largely on her first instrument, the piano, *Happiness Is Going to Get You* presents the more fantastical flip side to its dance-floor-driven predecessor, with the always glamboyant singer adopting a new persona she dubs the Infant Marie, whose retro-futurist look—part Marie Antoinette, part Klaus Nomi—serves as the album’s sonic mood board. The result is a set of cosmopolitan alt-pop earworms infused with a playfully baroque sensibility. The whistling hook and fleet-footed rhythms of “7th Floor” position it as a close cousin to Peter Bjorn and John’s mid-2000s touchstone “Young Folks,” while the bassy bounce of “Reunite” leads us into a sunshower of twinkling harpsichords. But Allie’s musical extravagance is always anchored by her self-analytical lyrics and devious sense of humor: “I Hope You Hear This Song” sees her dreaming of writing the sort of chart-topping hit that gets played everywhere out in the world—not for fame and fortune, but to haunt and taunt an ex-boyfriend while he’s “shopping at the mall, getting coffee at the stall.” And thanks to its insidious melody and buoyant “Bitter Sweet Symphony” strings, she just might get her wish.

The goth-pop powerhouse stirs up a dark yet whimsical storm on ‘Happiness Is Going To Get You’

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