Voom: Something Good is Happening (Flying Nun/digital outlets)

For those outside his immediate orbit, Buzz Moller is something of an enigma.

His intermittent project Voom – debut album Now I Am Me arrived in 1998, the follow-up Hello, Are You There? eight years later and given vinyl pressing in 2021 – have enjoyed great affection for their heartfelt, sometimes raw and always melodic alt.pop-rock which roams freely between ragged rock and slacker anthems.

He's never seemed in much of a hurry (check Happy Just Bumming Around on Hello) and that seems very much his character.

But he has a very interesting background as Chris Schulz wrote in his recent and excellent interview piece on Substack, check it out.

A writer of masterful understatement but a firm grasp of what makes optimistic pop work, Moller opens this long-awaited album with the brief but lovely, Four Freshmen-like vocal harmony piece Unless Are Alive (“you are never going to know how it feels”), offers chugging unburnished pop (Crazy Feeling) and crafts miniatures like the two minute title track (which says it all in just those words), the 90 second McCartneyesque Most Beautiful Girl and delightful pop of Everyone (“has the same love” with a touch of early Dylan in the delivery).

Only the distorted spook circus sound of Nightmare Man and lo-fi Pianos and Mushroomsinstrumental break the prevailing mood: One More Chance opens with “I couldn't live without you”, a typical sentiment here.

Someone hasn't had enough of silly love songs.

Something Good is Happening is a delight-filled, refreshing tonic of positive, local pop destined to be on many 2025 best of the year lists.

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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here, available on vinyl through Flying Nun here.