Pink Martini - The Making of "Get Happy"

GET HAPPY, Pink Martini's long-awaited studio follow-up to SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS, was released on September 24, 2013.
"I like the concept. I like the idea of getting happy especially in these bleak times because things are pretty bleak all around the world. Things are bleak in America, things are bleak in Greece, things are bleak in Spain, things are bleak in Afghanistan. I thought, the last thing the world needs is a restatement of the obvious. So the idea was to find optimism despite the bleakness. Where is hope? Let's find hope we can embrace in these dark times. That was the goal.
As it turned out the songs that I gravitated towards were not exactly cheery or exuberant. I mean they're uplifting ... but in a devastating sort of way. This past January I totally panicked because the album, which was due to be released in April, just didn't add up to "Get Happy." I thought: I don't want the whole thing to be ironic. I do want it to be genuinely uplifting, and to provide authentic rays of happiness.
It's taken a while and I'm still not quite sure that we've arrived at the happiest "get happy" place. That said, I think that this album is deep in thought, it is contemplative and it is beautiful. It's much older, especially compared with the innocence of Sympathique. With Sympathique nobody was paying any attention. I was barely paying attention. I was just making an album that I wanted to play on my stereo. I never thought that it would sell anywhere beyond Portland, Oregon. For the first five years we didn't travel. We stayed in town, we played every wedding in town. Those were scrappy years. Get Happy is definitely not scrappy. It's the product of years of growth, and this time we were definitely paying attention." -Thomas Lauderdale, bandleader of Pink Martini