Album review: Finn Wolfhard – Happy Birthday

When they’re not in the Upside Down, the Stranger Things cast are quite a musical bunch. Maya Hawke’s got three albums to her name already. Joe Keery set TikTok alight as musical alter-ego Djo. Jamie Campbell Bower’s always had a foot in our world, in Counterfeit and under his own steam, even listening to Architects to ready himself to step into Vecna’s gnarled skin.

Yet, of all his castmates, Finn Wolfhard’s connection to music might run deepest of all. His first acting gig was in a PUP video aged just 11, he’s got two bands on his CV already – The Aubreys and Calpurnia – and he’ll listen to everything from The Beatles to Lingua Ignota. Even without this prior context, his love shines from every crevice of his debut. Frankly, Happy Birthday is an album only a dyed-in-the-wool music geek could have made, and that’s a beautiful thing.

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Evidently, Finn has no qualms about being idiosyncratic, wonky or imperfect. His introduction by means of the title-track is warped, almost atonal, as he asks, ‘Happy birthday / What do you want?’ Recording to cassette has given these nine songs a warm yet unvarnished feel that beautifully compliments his louder, rockier moments, from Choose the latter’s breezy road trip-ready vibes (which have the vibe of ’90s alt.rock heroes Eels), to Eat’s rackety riffs (like a Weezer rehearsal recording). Then, there’s Crown, an agile, grungy centrepiece that simply oozes cool, with a hint of Beatles worship as the icing on the cake.

On the flipside, when he’s feeling sentimental, he picks up the acoustic. The folksier side of his music suits him just as well, the jaunty strums of Objection! to the wistful twilight serenade of Everytown there’s a darling serving as a complementary shadow side to his upbeat. Like separate pieces of a jigsaw, they connect to conjure images of a young man sat cross-legged on the floor of his bedroom, tinkering with chords, by himself, for himself.

Ultimately, though, that’s what makes what he does feel so genuine. It could slot into the soundtrack of anyone’s life, it has that sort of everyman, indie movie quality. But it’s for him first, and it’s an incredibly pure distillation of who Finn is when he’s not on camera.

Verdict: 4/5

For fans of: Eels, Weezer, The Beatles

Happy Birthday is released on June 6 via AWAL

Read this next:

• “It was a heavy burden keeping my mouth shut about Stranger Things”: 13 Questions with Jamie Campbell Bower
• PUP: “I wasn’t even trying to write a record. I just wanted to let what came out happen”
• “Some people think I’m a weirdo…” Rivers on Rivers: The Weezer frontman, in his own words