Happy Birthday by Altered Images

Happy Birthday, the 1981 debut from Scottish new wavers Altered Images, is a sugar rush with a post-punk shadow. Steven Severin produced most of it at Rockfield Studios, while the title track was handed to Martin Rushent and cut at Genetic Sound, and it shows: that one gleams.

Out front is Clare Grogan, whose girlish squeak turns every song into a playground chant, over guitars that jangle and chime one minute and go spiky and nervous the next. "Happy Birthday" itself is irresistible, a bouncing, giddy party of a single that went to number two in Britain in October 1981 and became the band's biggest hit. The album got to number 26 and went silver, selling more than 60,000 copies. The rest of the record is looser and moodier, a reminder that this band came up out of post-punk before pop came calling.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.