I met Half Happy in a corner of the City Arms pub in the centre of Cardiff. I’d had to rush there from work after sending an email claiming that ‘I wish teleportation was a real thing!’ I made it to the pub feeling a lot like those English-frazzled women you see on Pinterest. Except, instead of the cool version, I was just … well … frazzled?

They were in the corner of the pub, having a “band meeting”, as I quickly covered my eyes after accidentally seeing part of the set list for their show at the Sŵn Festival where they are going to be performing this evening in the upstairs room of Clwb Ifor Bach at 10:45 pm (no spoilers here, sorry!).

After spending 5 minutes with the members of Half Happy, I felt like I was a part of the band. The band has this kind of energy that draws you in, and it’s no wonder that they have a steadily growing fan base and discography of tracks that are sure to be hits sung back to them in the arena’s one day.

With a pint of water in front of me, the ice clinking around every time I picked it up, the interview began, where we talked about their newest EP, “Conversation Killer”, Sŵn Festival and what colour their music would be (if they had to choose!).

Meg: I wanted to start with your origin story. When did you decide that music was something you guys wanted to do together and how did that begin?

Rose: I was never really into songwriting or anything, and I had started messing around on Logic one day. I was doing a song I’d written when I was 13, and then Zac found it on Logic thought it was cool and asked to start a band.

Pete: I did not know this story!

Rose: Yeah! We just started writing more songs together. The first couple of singles, like Runaway and Steal Me Away, I feel came together in the first few weeks.

Zac: Well, it was lockdown wasn’t it? We had so much time to write.

Rose: And that’s how the music started. Then we realised that we needed a full band for it. There were a few different lineups and members before.

Jon: I was the photographer before! Before the band properly started, it was just Zac and Rose and I’m a photographer by trade so, I was kind of just taking photos of them. And then eventually I got asked to join.

Rose: So, yeah you [Jon] were on bass. Then we had another lineup change and then Pete came along.

Pete: I was born!

Rose: We never really set out to start a band or create a project.

Pete: Well again, you’ve [Rose] never performed before. This is Rose’s first rodeo.

Rose: It was like two weeks before our headline show in Clwb last year and we did an open mic night in Porters just so I could get used to singing in front of people. And that was the only time before performing at Clwb.

Pete: Other than in front of us or close family, Porters was the unveiling of Rose Miller and then we just went straight into that debut show and we’ve been following that momentum ever since.

Meg: I wanted to talk about how you arrived at the sound you’re at now. I love how expansive it feels — it’s super dreamy and spacey — and was there any sounds previous to that, that led you to where you are now?

Zac: Early days, it was just me and Rose writing so it was stripped back and quite dry. There was reverb, which we added to make it not as dry, but then there was just us two. Pete puts a lot of power into his strumming and that’s where all of the shoe-gaze came in.

Pete: I think the expansive sound was born from that. When the band came together, us four now, we were jamming in the spare room. We were a baby bedroom band, and we would play quietly, Zac would have to put silencers on his drums so the neighbours wouldn’t complain.

Jon: If you listen to Runaway Girl and then compare that to Bloom, it sounds so different, even though we were with the same producer.

Pete: I think that’s what the lovely thing about it is. It’s put us in a good position to release some really good tunes. Those first three songs that we released that these guys [Zac & Rose] did, I loved them from the first time I heard them. But, it’s been nice to use that and build off of that, and we’ve been able to already have the building blocks to come up into that expansive sound. Rather than starting off in the first place with that sound …

Rose: Yeah, I feel like you can hear the progression.

Pete: And I think that’s worked in our favour really well, to be fair. From there we’ve steadily gotten into a good place. We had our debut show last April which we had to work towards.

Zac: I think the reason the earlier stuff might have been drier is because we never played it live. We didn’t give it any energy, it was all only in the studio.

Rose: We’d never played them before, whereas with the newer tracks, we had the opportunity to try and test them out on the stage, so we know what works and what’s too slow or this or that. Then you can go back and take that into consideration.

Pete: I think it’s turning what the band was in the studio into a rock band. Rose has such a delicate voice, we were there trying to be careful to not overshadow that. With certain gear, we’ve been able to balance it out nicely.

Rose: We had to invest in a better microphone and other things so that everything comes through clearer and there’s always a consistent sound. It’s just little things like that where it can have such an impact going from venue to venue.

Pete: We went from the bedroom to then being like “We can be a band and play on these big stages” which is exactly what we needed to do this and succeed.

Meg: Are there any genres that you haven’t done yet that you’d like to do in the future?

Zac: I like exploring the synths … so anything that involves a synth I would love to explore further. But obviously, just put the band on top of that.

Rose: That’s a hard one because I feel like we’ve unconsciously put a lot of different threads of genres that we like in so far.

Pete: With our newest single Bloom there’s an acoustic guitar throughout the entirety of it. You don’t think that, but then if it was taken away there would probably be an element that you’d be missing out on, so it’s just trying to be as expansive as possible.

Rose: I’ve resisted the urge to go full-on Squid vocals, but that would be fun as hell!

Meg: What do you hope people take away from your music?

Pete: If people come to watch us, I do want to attempt to blow people away in the way that we can. Having that impact and relating to the last question, being loud and being punchy.

Meg: Leaving an impression, right?

Pete: Yeah! But, also having the delicacy with the vocals and the lovely guitar bits.

Zac: I think with the EP, I will have wanted people to have gone through a journey or an experience. It feels like it is a coherent piece of work, which we’ve worked on for a long time.

Pete: 100%. There’s such versatility with the five songs, but you sort of come in and out.

Rose: I always have this idea of people swinging between laughing or crying. That’s literally it.

Pete: Well that’s what being Half Happy is.

Rose: We want to feel like this could make someone cry or they might find humour in a dark place.

Zac: As long as they enjoy it, then I’m happy.

Pete: I just want a pat on the back when I come off stage, you know?

Zac: I also want the ground to shake beneath people’s feet … like the end to Steal Me Away is so different live than what it is on the record because we play it so much harder.

Meg: I’d love to talk to you guys about your EP release next. How did that come to be and what inspired you during the creative / writing process? You said that it’s taken you a little while, so I’d love to chat more about that.

Rose: Lyrically, they are all made up of conversations or texts or messages, where you sometimes don’t necessarily get out your honest feelings at the moment because you don’t want to have that conversation with someone. You kind of leave it aside, but then there’s so much that you wish you could have said … so that’s kind of the theme. I guess in terms of the inspiration for lyrics and everything, Well Done Honey, for example, I had gotten home from work, and I’d had this awful day, and it was raining, and all of the lyrics came out in one babble, and that was it.

Zac: The songs were written over maybe a year. One of the songs was written in a songwriting class for Forte, so there are people out there who heard the early version of Bloom without even knowing that it was Bloom. If we hadn’t done the songwriting class, then Bloom might not exist, which is crazy because it’s a great song.

Zac: Slow Down was written just acoustically, us two [Zac & Rose] just jamming and then that progressed and built.

Jon: Well Done Honey especially went through a journey.

Pete: It was originally a country song.

Meg: Wait, really?

Jon: Yeah, it sounded so different to what it is now.

Zac: Oh we need to get the old demo up.

Meg: I have to listen to this demo, I want to hear this country version!

Zac: Then Sorry went through a journey too.

Meg: Sorry is my favourite track!

Zac: We went through a journey with that one too, because it was another idea.

Pete: It changed dramatically like a week before taking it to the studio, we added in the rockier bits. You know when you’re cramming for an exam …

Meg: Yeah, it’s like meeting a word count!

Pete: We had a Half Happy crunch time and I was just adding any guitar in anywhere.

Rose: Up In Daisies was quite a hard one to work out, like the vocal line. I think for ages I didn’t do any talking, we were trying to sing something and none of the melodies were working. So I thought why don’t I just talk the verses?

Meg: What made you want to put Sorry first? In terms of track listing, how do you figure that out?

Zac: It’s the one that has the best intro.

Pete: I think we were quite sure about Sorry being the first one because it’s upbeat.

Zac: I think it sets the scene for the rest of the EP.

Rose: It’s quite a happy song, even though it’s not lyrically, I think it sounds the happiest. All of these felt like diary entries, and it feels like it’s a part of a day. That [Sorry] would be the one you hear in the morning, and then you go through the motions a little bit, and then you’re in the car crying on your way home from work. That’s what I feel, anyway. And then Up In Daisies gets so crazy towards the end that it feels quite nice to drop into an isolating guitar moment and then go into our slowest song ever.

Jon: I think we always knew what the singles were going to be in the end, and like you, Sorry is my favourite song as well, so I always felt like when people listened to the EP for the first time, I didn’t want the first song to be something they had already listened to, so putting Sorry first just made sense.

Zac: We chose five songs in the end, but we had maybe eight in total. Eight contenders, which I haven’t listened to since we left them.

Meg: This is a little out there so you don’t have to answer if you can’t think of anything, but if your music was a colour, what do you think it would be and why?

Pete: Blue.

Rose: It does feel quite blue, doesn’t it?

Meg: I kind of get orange vibes.

Zac: Yeah, autumnal vibes!

Jon: I’ve always thought of yellow or orange. Especially with the sunflower branding, that’s how I’ve always seen it.

Rose: We started with a burnt orange before we even came up with branding, that was always the colour for us. The font we were using at the beginning was called Tangerine as well, so orange was always in there.

Pete: The music has always felt warm as well.

Rose: But then at the same time it does feel blue! But that’s more of a feeling colour.

Zac: It’s difficult to think of any other colours it could be since we and everyone else have seen the autumnal colours with it already.

Pete: It’s our first body of work, so we’ve just wanted to go about it the right way with no regrets.

Meg: What are you guys most excited about for Sŵn Festival?

Rose: It’s our first time playing in upstairs Clwb!

Jon: That’s a big one for us.

Meg: I’ve never been upstairs in Clwb! So I’m excited to see it when you guys play.

Pete: We played Sŵn Festival last year, and we were playing Moon, and it was the third time we had played there. It was by far the best time we’d played; it was packed out, and we weren’t playing for any of our friends, so it was a brand-new crowd. It worked out really well in that aspect, and now we’re able to build off of everything that we have already done. Plus, the fact that we have this body of work and we are now able to show it off to Cardiff is exciting.

Rose: It’s quite nice to get a different crowd in.

Jon: That’s what I love about Sŵn is that it’s not only bringing the Welsh music scene together, it brings a lot of other people from outside of that community as well and you’re constantly meeting new people which is good too.

Zac: I’m excited to play some of the new songs and see all of the other bands as well as the conferences.

Jon: English Teacher is going to be great because we actually played with them a year ago, we supported them in London. I think we were on a playlist on Spotify for ‘Hot New Bands’ or something, and they were on it too, and the promotors put our bands together.

Zac: It was an amazing show, but it was strange because we were first on. We were at the side of the stage, and there was no one there, so we were like, ‘What’s going on?’. We didn’t realise that they hadn’t opened the doors yet and they opened them as we started and it was packed out in three minutes.

Meg: Do you get nervous before you play?

Jon: Not as much these days.

Zac: The Welsh Music Prize last year was probably the most nervous I have gotten.

Jon: I remember pacing up and down for half an hour backstage.

Zac: Mainly because you have so much space to do that.

Jon: It’s weird, though, because I’ll get nervous before a show, but as soon as I’m playing, I feel relaxed.

Rose: I’ve definitely gotten better at it, I’m not as nervous as I was, in the beginning, it was tough.

Meg: My final question for you is as 2024 comes to a close, what do you hope for the end of the year and what do you guys hope for 2025?

Pete: I’m really glad that we are ending a really positive year with our first headline tour. The fact that we are closing the year out so nicely in that respect will only then make starting next year that much better.

Zac: We are finishing this year in Cardiff with a hometown headline show.

Rose: It will feel like a nice celebration and round-up of the year.

Zac: It’s all been about the EP this year from January all the way through. Next year we just want to play more shows.

Pete: We want to go on some good support tours, we feel like we are in a good position.

Jon: Just see what happens!

Read more music stories from KLATMAG

Written by Meg Ivy Brunning