Happy Ever After, the latter offering from this New Zealand band is a noisy collage with stellar female vocals. Although better produced, yet still not as good as the album previous to it, this alt-pop release from Hoi Polloi provides much distortion for fans of the sound. I like that the lead guitar maintains that sound throughout, and that the lead vocals are not always such, but I do wish the bass was less so at times, especially when following with a more funky backdrop.

"Tiptoe" and "Thaw" exemplify the unique range of singer Jenny Gullen. Songs like "Lucy" display the guitar talents of her husband. "Big Fat Happy Day" also presents the band with another cheery hit. "Sun, Moon, and Stars" really differs, almost providing a bluesy version of the group at that time. And finally, "Love Has Comes" concludes the album as a decent ballad, akin to "Take Me Home" from Spin Me.

These songs are quite experimental, causing Happy Ever After to not be as cohesive as the band's previous two releases. The vocals run the gamut emotionally, while the instrumentation provides a fuzzy backdrop throughout. There are just some occasions where I wish the basslines to have been engineered differently, not brought so forward in the recording mix. Hoi Polloi often sounds like a mash-up of Morella's Forest and Paramore. I applaud the creativity here and the vocalist's raspy positivity, even though the lyrics aren't explicitly evangelical.

JFH Reader Review: written by Derek Lehman, 4/17/23, for Jesusfreakhideout.com