Zoon - Happy Thought School
Paper Bag Records
Released on June 19th, 2026
Since 2020’s Bleached Wavves, Daniel Monkman has been meticulously crafting "moccasin-gaze," a singular style that marries the dizzying, multi-layered guitar textures of early My Bloody Valentine with the distinct aesthetics of the Indigenous Revival movement. On that debut, Indigenous percussion stood front and center on tracks like “Was & Always Will Be,” while the guitar production came unapologetically from Kevin Shield’s playbook, dripping with smeared, reverse-delayed hooks.
By 2023's Bekka Ma’iingan, Monkman kept that sonic blueprint intact but chose to emphasize expansive ambient soundscapes over concise songwriting. Ethereal dream-pop tracks like “Dodem” dissolved into the shimmering drone of “Niizh Manidoowig (2 spirit),” and the hypnotic loops of “A Language Disappears” prioritized meditative repetition over melodic variation, making the vocal lines feel almost incidental to the cyclical nature of the track.
With Zoon’s third LP, Happy Thought School, the pre-release press framed the album's direction as “early-2000s Top 20 hits blasting through headphones.” On paper, that suggests an album of straightforward pop hooks regurgitated through a subversive lens, and one would be tempted to expect something like Cher’s heavily autotuned “Believe” put through a sludge-pop filter à la Brian Borcherdt.
The reality, however, is far more nuanced and deeply felt. Instead of cheap pop pastiche, Happy Thought School reveals a songwriter more focused on the precision and intention of each take than ever before. Take “OMNI II,” which plays like Len’s bubbly 1999 hit “Steal My Sunshine” filtered through slinky bass synths and depressive teenage angst. Over a surprisingly sunny, infectious groove, Monkman croons, “Just another day wake up / In love / Spent another long day in / In bed,” delivering the lines under the icy distance of heavily autotuned vocals. The sharp contrast of bleak lyrics delivered via bright, nostalgic melodies perfectly mirrors the childhood memories that inspired the record: a young Monkman standing alone in a school field, using cheap headphones and pop radio to block out a hostile environment.
This thematic juxtaposition serves as the record's central thesis, anchored by the ambient title track, "Happy Thought School." Here, we hear Monkman’s relatives speaking about systemic racism with an irreverent humor that serves as a classic coping mechanism for a reality so outrageous and dark that the only way to survive it is to laugh.
To quote Ralph Ellison, Zoon’s Happy Thought School is an archive that “keep[s] the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one's aching consciousness… by squeezing from it a near-tragic, near-comic lyricism.”
This is precisely what Monkman achieves on Happy Thought School. By wrapping deeply alienated lyricism in laid-back rhythms, shimmering guitars, and sunny production, Zoon doesn't just look back at childhood trauma. Instead, they squeeze a vital, survivalist beauty right out of it.
