Happiness Factor

The Happiness Factor channel a razor-sharp strain of power pop whose drive and acidic humor echo the new wave era of Elvis Costello, the Jam, and the Damned, yet they temper that foundation with a distinctly modern emphasis on velocity and exactitude. At the project’s core stands Salim Nourallah, a singer and songwriter fixated on pop craft who first rose to notice through the gentler Nourallah Brothers.

Nourallah handles bass and vocals alongside guitarists Paul Averitt and Steve Duncan plus drummer John Jay Myers. Under that lineup the band issued its first album, Self-Improvement?, on the Summer Break label in 2001. Three years later Nourallah, Averitt, and Duncan convened at Nourallah’s Pleasantry Lane Studios with several additional players to lay down the follow-up full-length Avoid Danger, issued in 2004 by Paisley Pop.