Baby Bird - Happiest Man Alive

All Music Guide

Baby Bird's The Happiest Man Alive is the fourth album Steven Jones has assembled from his home recordings in the span of just under a year. Given that fact, it shouldn't be entirely surprising that it is the weakest Baby Bird album to date. The Happiest Man Alive feels like outtakes from Bad Shave and Fatherhood, and in a way they are. Jones recorded some 600 songs in his home on a Casio and cheap guitar over the course of six years and began assembling his records from these very tapes in 1995. Though there are literally hundreds of songs left in his collection, The Happiest Man Alive suggests that he picked all the best tracks for his first three albums. Occasionally, he has buried a gem within his kitschy, melancholy camp-caberet, but the album is only of interest to fanatics and fetishists, willing to dig through everything Jones has recorded.

- Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide