Blood Cultures intentionally composed Happy Birthday to sound mysteriously shrouded, like interpreting things from a child's perspective. With layers upon layers of soft claps, pulsating synths, and unintelligble vocals of varying pitches, the album hides simple melodies under tidal swells of sound that convey his nostalgia for his childhood to the maximum extent.

The slight harmonies in "Indian Summer" are unassuming, a little unconfident, almost dreamlike. In "Phospholipid", there's a pleasant fight for auditory space between a ringing solo guitar and the song's perpetual waves of thick, piano-driven chords. There's an evident pattern in the album where singing is prioritized third or fourth in the hierarchy, always hidden behind a synth or bass. Like a chameleon, the vocals often camouflage into the music.

The closest Happy Birthday gets to sounding like pop is on its sixth track "Mercury Child", whose synthetic horns embellish the song's steady pulse with a swagger that contrasts the easiness of the song's other components. Blood Cultures shines at selecting and altering melodies, which are typically samples. But the album loses its shimmer somewhere in its second half; mellower tracks like "Detroit" and "The Way It Was Meant To Be" fail to stand out when Blood Cultures uses his vocals as legitimate vocals and not as another instrument.

Like its creator's commitment to maintaining almost complete anonymity, Happy Birthday holds on extremely tightly to its distinct warm identity, where, at its best, all components of the music share center stage. Altogether, the album's combination of subdued singing over sidechained synths gives it an ethos that's bright, moody, never hollow, larger than life at times, and ultimately gushing with sounds evocative of better days.

Favorite song: "Moon"