By Deuce

The primary motif for “Happiness”, the first single from Millennium Resorts’ forthcoming album In the Key of David, which is set to tear down musical boundaries with a late January release, is to start small, build incessantly, then overwhelm in strength and volume.

The duo does so repeatedly on both versions of the track, which includes a 7-minute full version and a more radio friendly edit that clocks in just shy of the five-minute marker. Sometimes, they get going with the most innocuous of riffs, typically on the synth. Other times they begin with a couple of keyboard chords. Then, before long, those initial instruments are joined by others, the groove/melody is awash in a sea of colors, and it comes roaring to the foreground of the song, to what’s oftentimes a spectacular effect.

The musicality supporting such thematic progressions, as you may have inferred, is highly sophisticated. Much of it seems to be deliberately off-kilter, kind of the way the world looks when you’ve had one too many. Nonetheless it inspires, engenders chromatic renditions and, to a large extent, visions of shapes.

Other elements in this oeuvre are decidedly more accessible. The drum track builds upon the four-on-the-floor pounding by doubling and even tripling up the kicks in parts—giving dancers something to hold onto and to stay piqued. There’s a pretty serious open high hat that intones on the downbeat in some passages, almost demanding the listener’s attention.

But the discordant musical map goes suddenly silent (or close to it in parts) to showcase the vocal chops of the lead singer (either Scott Raulie or Jonathan Richerson, the two gents the group’s comprised of) that are surprisingly sweet yet utterly devoid of the saccharine. “Happiness is overrated,” he belts out on more than one occasion and, with the dub step-like bass reverberating, a whirlwind of an electric guitar solo raging near the cut’s conclusion, and all the sonic imagery, if you will, raised by the duo’s collaborative prowess, who’s to dispute him?