By JAYDEE LOK
alltherage@thestar.com.my

WHEN I think of happiness, it’s a vision of me on my couch, my kid running around and I’m eating pizza. That makes me happy. That’s my favourite thing to do. The thing is, it’s so uncool that I haven’t said it until right now,” said drummer Mark O’Connell of Taking Back Sunday at our interview at the Grand Park Orchard Hotel in Singapore last week.

It’s extremely clichéd to ask people what happiness is to them, but that is a question the band members should expect from interviewers across the globe seeing as how they’re the ones who made the decision to name their 6th studio album Happiness Is.

What started off as just another emo punk band from Long Island, New York in 1999, has spent the last decade and a half constantly changing members and evolving into the world-renowned rock group it is today.

Putting the drama of its past behind, the band is back to its “classic” line-up with O’Connell, lead vocalist Adam Lazzara, guitarists John Nolan and Eddie Reyes, and bassist Shaun Cooper.

The entertainer: While he was screaming to songs about heartache, lead vocalist Adam Lazzara entertained the crowd by talking like a sideshow presenter.

After performing its first show in Singapore the night before and entertaining a full day of interviews, the men looked as if they could really use a break. Reyes fiddled with a bag of fast food – trying to soothe a tummy ache.

None of them look like the miserable young boys who once wrote passive aggressive songs against other bands and sang about girls who didn’t love them.

As the main lyricist of the band, Lazzara once spoke about how the stories behind the band’s more emotional ballads like Your Own Disaster and Call Me In The Morning had caused problems in his personal relationships with people.

Thankfully, Nolan assured us that this situation has changed.

“When we were younger, I definitely remember there being more people wondering if something (in our music) was written about them. I think that caused problems sometimes,” shared Nolan.

“It’s interesting – I think as we’ve gotten older, it’s become sort of a separate thing. Like, this is my musical life and this is my real life. But at a younger age, it was all a little more tangled together and a little more difficult.”

They have grown into good family men and their struggles no longer involve teenage infidelity nor substance abuse.

“I think I can speak for everyone when I say the biggest sacrifice we make for the band is being away from our families,” said Lazzara, while the rest nodded in agreement. A moment of sadness glazed the room.

Over the years, the members of Taking Back Sunday have been trying to prove that they can play more than just repetitive cadences. From the recently released live version of their first album Tell All Your Friends to their acoustic offering Live From Orensanz, Taking Back Sunday’s music has transformed into a more intricate and sophisticated sound, and this continued growth is apparent in Happiness Is.

“I think that with this album, we were a lot more open to trying some new ideas and letting some of the more recent influences come through,” said Nolan, referring to the post rock-esque song Nothing At All and pop rock track Stood A Chance.

“I think we’ll continue to be more open (with our music in the future) but we don’t know where that’s going to take things. It’ll be interesting,” he continued.

After a series of disputes, Taking Back Sunday has returned to its original lineup.

Nevertheless, the question still remains: are the members of Taking Back Sunday genuinely happy? Have the “wishful thinkers with the worst intentions” found actual contentment in their lives?

“I don’t think we would have named the album that (Happiness Is) if we were anything else,” said Cooper.

It was hard at first to comprehend how someone who is filled with joy can channel the kind of vulnerability and emotional depth you hear in the quintet’s songs like It Takes More and Better Homes And Gardens. How do happy people write sad songs?

“They’re more like reflections on things that have happened in the past,” said Lazzara. “Each one is like it’s own little photograph in time.”

“I don’t think any one person is always happy. I think they’d be strange,” explained Nolan.

“I think that, a lot of times, what we need to get out of our system is not the happy stuff. The stuff that doesn’t make you happy tends to be the stuff that you end up expressing creatively, but that doesn’t mean you’re not a happy person.”

“Yeah, we’re not gonna have a song about Mark eating pizza on his couch!” joked Reyes.

Happiness Is drops on March 18 and is available at leading record stores.