Leon Bridges Jams With Jungle On New Album

Leon Bridges is ready to trade introspection for movement. The Dallas-reared singer/songwriter will release his fifth album, Happiness Anytime, on Sept. 25 via Columbia Records, marking a new creative partnership with U.K. outfit Jungle’s J Lloyd-Watson and Lydia Kitto. Rather than unveiling the 12-song project all at once, Bridges is introducing it in three four-song installments, with the first batch — “Light the Way,” “Tears of Joy,” “Illusion” and “Your Love Is Electric” –out now.

Bridges has spent the past month previewing the material with pop-up performances in Paris, Cannes, Los Angeles, at the Montreux Jazz Festival and London’s Jazz Cafe, where he played last night (July 16) and returns again this evening.

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Happiness Anytime reunites Bridges with the warmth of his 2015 debut Coming Home while embracing the groove-forward spirit of his more recent work. The album was born after years of crossing paths with Lloyd-Watson and Kitto on the festival circuit before the trio finally met for what was intended to be a low-pressure writing session in Los Angeles. “We’ve been such big fans of Leon,” Lloyd-Watson said. “We were keen to hit it off.”

They did more than that. Within four days, the trio had completed six songs, adopting a simple philosophy that carried through the entire record. “We aren’t leaving until we have a full track at the end of the day,” Lloyd-Watson said. “We didn’t want to have, ‘We’ll come back to this tomorrow.’ We wanted fully finished tracks.”

That spontaneity became the album’s defining characteristic. Kitto recalled Bridges arriving with a simple goal: “Leon said he wants to have music that he can dance to. He wants to have moments where he can put the guitar down and just dance and perform at the front.” As the sessions continued, the collaborators folded in inspirations ranging from Fela Kuti and Brazilian music to soul, disco and Latin rhythms, while legendary bassist Pino Palladino joined them at Los Angeles’ Chaplin Recording Studios to help complete the album.

The title doubles as a mission statement. “It’s music you can put on no matter how you’re feeling,” Kitto said, “and it makes you feel happy and it makes you want to get up and dance.” For Bridges, the record represents a conscious effort to offer some light at a time when that can feel increasingly elusive.

“For me, happiness is not a feeling that you chase,” he said. “I want this album to be something that lingers with people and lingers in people’s bones. There’s this feeling that we have to fix the problems of the world; you feel inadequate or it can be debilitating. My role is to be light. I hope that comes across with this album.”

To match that spirit, Bridges has also unveiled Leon Bridges Presents Happiness Anytime, a revamped live production featuring a vinyl DJ, horn section, three backing vocalists and Bridges back out front dancing again — an evolution designed to reflect the album’s emphasis on communal joy.

Happiness Anytime is the follow-up to 2024’s Leon, which boasted contributions from John Mayer plus veteran Nashville songwriters/musicians Ian Fitchuk and Daniel Tashian.

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