The Family Grave Wrote Happy Songs in One February, Then Waited Years for a Band
The Family Grave Wrote Happy Songs in One February, Then Waited Years for a Band
Recorded in Hove Through 2020 with Violin, Trumpet and Harmonium, It Began a Trilogy
The Family Grave released Happy Songs on 1 April 2022, the first full-band album from the Brighton songwriter Jon. Its opening track turns the title on its head straight away: “It’s so easy, to sing a sad song”. Four years on, it reads as the first step of a run that reaches a fifth album, Freedom Of Speech, this December.
The Family Grave’s Happy Song, the opening track of Happy Songs, is in the playlist below, with the country, Americana and alt-country this desk keeps on rotation, and the band’s artist profile brings its coverage together. The album came to this desk through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news desks. Hit play, then keep reading for where the trilogy went next.
Happy Songs Took The Family Grave From Tape-Recorded Lo-Fi to a Full Band at Church Road Studios
Before Happy Songs, Jon’s records were homemade. As Hiawatha Telephone Company, he released two lo-fi folk-pop albums recorded straight to tape. They were Harry Smith Was My Father and Passengers Greatest Hits. Then, as The Family Grave, came Everybody is Flawed in January 2019, recorded in Brighton the year before. In May 2020, during the first lockdown, he made Under the Cover of Lockdown on a mobile phone at home. It held one original and seven covers.
The ten songs on Happy Songs are older than they look. Jon wrote all of them in a single February for FAWM, the February Album Writing Month challenge. He then held them back, because they deserved more than another straight-to-tape release. Apart from a few outings on stage, they stayed unrecorded.
The full band arrived in 2020. Between March and December, Jon recorded the album at Church Road Studios in Hove and produced it with Paul Pascoe. Martyn Moss, who also records as M. Butterfly, plays electric guitar, bass, keys and harmonium on most of the songs. Maria Marzioli of the punk band Slum of Legs adds violin to seven tracks. Matt Ellis Devitt of the Meow Meows brings trumpet to two, and Simon Adams drums on three. On Anna Maria and The Wild Boys, Jon asked Devitt to think of Miles Davis.
The release itself was small. Happy Songs came out as a limited cassette and a download. Before it, Mr Train Driver appeared on a very limited 7-inch through the Super8 Singles Club. James Kendall shot a Super 8-style video for it, featuring Hannah Wilde. Happy Song got its own video from the photographer Jerry Webb. Bandcamp buyers still receive a bonus track, I Walked Around, which was the B-side of that 7-inch.
The Stories Behind Happy Song, Mr Train Driver and The Wild Boys
The songs themselves are stories, and the styles shift with them. Happy Song and Memories (Growing Older) lean folk, while I’d Follow The Sun and Mr Train Driver lean garage rock. When You’re On Your Own is sadcore. Happy Song borrows the famous first line of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, about happy and unhappy families. It turns that idea into a song about owning sadness. Mr Train Driver thanks a real driver who calmed a stalled train full of furious passengers. I’m Not Hard To Get Along With is a straight country song with violin from Maria. The Wild Boys takes its title from a William Burroughs novel. The album closes on a love song told through colours, listed as Roses on Bandcamp and Colours on Spotify.
After Happy Songs, The Family Grave Finished a Trilogy and Set Freedom Of Speech for 4 December
Happy Songs turned out to be the first part of a trilogy. The Family Grave Play Songs About Love followed in September 2024, with vinyl and CD available through ElasticStage. Old Songs for Kids then closed the Happy Old Love Songs trilogy in October 2025. Jon recorded it at the same Hove studio across 2024 and 2025, with Peter on drums and Matt on trumpet.
Smaller releases filled the gaps. The Family Grave Live in ’22 collected two solo Brighton shows from June and October 2022. In August 2025, the Everyone is Good EP captured three songs played live and acoustic for ms_GFO’s Behind the Playlist radio show. Daylight arrived as a single in January 2026. In September, Jon shared a lathe-cut double-A-side 7-inch, Two Songs About Migration, with the songwriter Jon Hopper.
Next comes Freedom Of Speech, due on 4 December 2026. Its core was written in July and August 2025. Jon, Martyn and Peter then recorded it back in Hove in a single weekend at the end of August. They were after a rawer sound. The band also makes a point of saying that no AI has been involved in any of its recordings.
Captain Beefheart, Pharrell Williams and the Happy Song That Is Not Happy
Two pop records also sparked Happy Song, and they make an odd couple. Captain Beefheart‘s Happy Love Song comes from Unconditionally Guaranteed, the 1974 album critics called too commercial, after which the entire Magic Band quit. Pharrell Williams‘s Happy arrived in 2013 with a 24-hour music video and became the last UK number one of that year. Jon borrowed the idea of a happy song from both and pointed it somewhere more bittersweet.
Who It Is For
Happy Songs suits listeners of alt-folk, alt-country and indie folk who like a song to tell a story. It also fits anyone drawn to the quieter end of sadcore. For playlist curators, the ten songs sit easily beside each other, from the opening Happy Song to the closing love song.
MusicDrops.News’s curator team:
“At 36 minutes, Happy Songs never wastes a song. It is the full-band debut of a writer who had already spent years learning what a song needs. It is also the best door into a catalogue that now runs to five albums.”
The whole album plays in the Spotify player at the top of this page, and the download is on Bandcamp. Follow The Family Grave on Spotify, Instagram and X, and watch the Mr Train Driver video on TikTok.
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