Brisbane alternative outfit Happy Valley make a fearless entrance with their debut EP Know What You Are, a five-track dive into grief, identity, and the growing pains that shape us. Recorded above a Fortitude Valley bar at La La Land Studios with producer Tom Megalos, the EP captures a band refusing to smooth the edges. Instead, they push three-part guitar lines together like tectonic plates, interlocking riffs instead of safe power-chord tropes, building a turbulent and strangely uplifting sound.
Led by brothers Trey Cooper and Beau Gibbons, alongside Mitchell Degotardi, Mikaela Swan, and Joel Shipley, Happy Valley arenโt shy about confronting the moments that gut us. These songs arrive as open wounds, stitched together by the hope that healing might be on the other side. The EP is intentionally a messy, imperfect, but brutally honest snapshot, celebrating mistakes as the very proof of being alive.
The opener โLights Onโ immediately sets the emotional stakes. Thumping drums and splashing cymbals drive forward under shimmering, grinding guitars. Trey sings with a thick, emotive grit, vulnerable yet unflinching, like someone forcing themselves to stay upright under a weight that should bring them to their knees.
Later, โFlames & Wavesโ throws itself headfirst into the storm. Sparkling percussive hits and tense rhythms pulse beneath vocals that ache, crack, and soar with anguish. The guitars swell and churn like a tide that refuses to settle, reflecting a narrator caught between drowning and burning up.
Finally, โLead Me Awayโ closes the EP in gut-punch fashion. Its head-nodding rhythm and tapping beats give way to raw confession. The voice turns sultry, desperate, pleading, โTell me thereโs no oneโฆโ He reaches into the rafters of his range as grinding guitars whirl beneath him, capturing the collapse of a love both clung to and coming apart.
With Know What You Are now out in the world, Happy Valleyโs next mission is the stage, where these songs will likely hit like emotional aftershocks. Stay tuned for more.
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Review by: Naomi Joan