Jeff Parker ETA IVtet — Happy Today (2026)
- h-music8
- 6 days ago
- 2 min read
Out now on International Anthem / Nonesuch Records
Happy Today is the third album from guitarist Jeff Parker's long-running ETA IVtet, recorded live at Lodge Room in Los Angeles on August 20, 2025, and for the first time, outside the walls of the now-shuttered bar that gave the band its name.
The context matters. Parker describes 2025 as a very difficult year: displacement from the Eaton fires, family strain, political despair. The Lodge Room show became something else, a moment of community, of joy reclaimed. Hence the title, offered as a statement, not a question.
The album contains two sidelong improvisations, performed in the round before an audience of around 400 listeners, a drastic shift from the intimate corner of ETA, yet the music loses nothing of its intimacy. If anything, it breathes more freely. The band's signature syntax, long-form, minimalist improvisation, slowly evolving, tension-building, groove-anchored, expands confidently into the larger space while keeping its hypnotic, deeply tuned effect intact.
Opener Like Swimwear is a masterclass in patience. It builds tension over its first ten minutes without a moment of harmonic dissonance, each member stepping forward and backward in the sonic space, pulling at the corners of the rhythm in a trancelike, gleefully disorienting group cadence. Then the shift comes, and when it does, it feels both inevitable and surprising.
"The band isn't afraid to explore static spaces," says Parker. "The thing is to stay on one idea for a while. Really, for a long time. To kind of exhaust it. And then one person shifts and the thing moves together."
Happy Today is an invitation. Put it on, surrender to the pace, and let yourself get lost.
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Discover more
Jeff Parker and the ETA IVtet are featured in two H-Music playlists. Find them in Jrapzz (our home for nu-jazz, jazztronica and future jazz), in Jazz Now (a constantly updated selection of the best in contemporary jazz) and Take the time (for those who take the time to take their time. A journey through long, immersive tracks)
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