Irresistibly upbeat, sublime and cynical, The Pursuit Of Happiness’s debut, Love Junk, cast a wry eye across relationships in the late 80s as Woody Allen had some 10 years previously. Singer and songwriter Moe Berg even had the considered, bespectacled, intuitive look down, just like Woody – if Woody had worn a Gregg Allman wig.
Berg wrote all the songs and sang them as if his girlfriend had just run off with the florist who’d delivered the flowers Moe had sent her. He had a sense of humour about it, though; you could just imagine him running the pair down in his Subaru and chuckling as he did so.
The Toronto band managed to combine pop music with pathos and razor-sharp lyrics, and it’s no surprise that Berg has since published a book of short stories. The songs remain lustrous and polished, buoyed up by rattling storylines and tortured, emphatic digs. Subjects include infidelity, infatuation, cults, crime and a love song that never mentions that word once. The songs’ sharp edges, musically and emotionally, are tempered to perfection by Todd Rundgren’s crisp production.
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“We used Todd because he was my hero and I thought he was one of the best producers in the world at the time,” Moe Berg told Classic Rock in 2003. “He helped us define our sound and kind of figured out what was good about the band and pointed us in that direction. There was a bland, sissy element to some of our material, material which he banished. I’m forever grateful.”
Love Jun’ gave The Pursuit Of Happiness a minor hit single in the dryly observed I’m An Adult Now and an enduring pop classic in She’s So Young. You can’t stumble across a power-pop compilation album to this day and not see the latter about halfway down the running order.
Deservedly so, as the song shimmers brightly, sparkling, bouncing along merrily as Berg shrugs his shoulders and sighs, ‘Like the wisdom of ages/Will flow from her tongue/This is the delusion of the young’. You try taking those lyrics and making them sound wistful, impassioned, pained and still vital over a decade later on some Rhino Records collection or other. It’s much to The Pursuit Of Happiness’s credit that that track doesn’t run nimbly away and leave the rest of the album standing.
Beautiful White is the aforementioned love song that isn’t a love song as such, Berg running through a spectrum of backlit colours as he describes a girlfriend kicking off her clothes. It’s such an intimate snapshot that at the last moment you want to look away, but instead you bathe in the warm, dappling glow.
Walking In The Woods rides along on a cascade of drums, Berg’s strength as a storyteller coming to the fore; snatched moments on a subway train framed in the flashes of light coming through the carriage window. It’s a dark, almost eerie tale, and exemplifies the band’s bleak narrative and lightness of touch.
The Pursuit Of Happiness still occasionally play together in their native Canada, for fun and funds, as Berg admits. They made a number of great albums after this one, but Love Junk is the one that resonates most. An album full of songs for those who’ve given up on love but have somehow done so with an open, still hopeful heart.
The original version of this feature appeared in Classic Rock 63, published in December 2003.
