Well, quite. Normally, starting work on a Monday morning is something of a depressing experience - loading up the computer, wading through all the junk email from women calling themselves Big Tina, desperately trying to find something good to say about that latest CD from that terrible band nobody has ever heard of... you know the deal.

But on this occasion, the latest release from The Lighthouse Family is waiting on my desktop, and suddenly everything else can wait. Ironically, I was only listening to The Lighthouse Family on a local radio station last night, so the sound is fresh in my mind and I have been looking forward to hearing their latest offering... but will I be dissapointed?

For this review, I listened to two CD versions of the soul duo's latest single, Happy, the third from their platinum album Whatever Gets You Through The Day. The first silver disc contains the radio edit and a special vocal mix by Portuguese producer Rui Da Silva which is allready making itself known in clubs around the UK. The second showcases the full length track, a remix of High and the title track from their album.

Happy is certainly well named - the beat is highly infectious and my foot is tapping as I listen to it. The track has that typical soul groove about it - Tunde Baiyewu and Paul Tucker still manage to pull it off to perfection, sounding hopelessly optimistic and unbearably relaxed at the same time. The vocals seem to come effortlessly to them - almost as though the duo are singing while putting their feet up and reading the paper. It's this laid back style of the seventies which has all but been lost in modern popular music. I make it no secret that I'm no big fan of twenty-first century dance music, but The Lighthouse Family can always be trusted to provide us with something everybody can dance to - even those of us who were around when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon (If only by a year). I've lost count of the amount of times I've played it, but it hasn't got old for me yet. It's happy, upbeat and positive, and when watched with the video (see below) it really does make you want to turn the clock back a few years to when everything in the charts was like this and head down the local club to dance the night away…

So what about the different versions on offer here? Well, would somebody please tell me who invented the concept of the radio mix, and where can I get my hands on them? This is just an excuse to hack about at a perfectly good tune in order to fit more songs into a smaller amount of airtime. I remember when DJs fell over themselves to play the latest 24 minute mix of Hotel California or Tubular Bells - what happened, guys? The full version of Happy is so much better than the radio mix, it's amazing. For airplay, the length of the piece has been cut by nearly a minute and a half, including cutting the really excellent intro to vertially nothing. If all you've heard of Happy is on the radio, then you should make a beeline for your local music store immediately and pick up a proper copy...

Are you still here? Well, for those of you that are, you might be more interested in the Rui Da Silva club mix. This is very well done indeed - most club mixes tend to be attempts by comtemporary DJs to take a well known piece of music by a famous artist from as long ago as possible, and convert it into something the modern generation will dance to. This hardly ever works, and we just end up with a horrible collection of sounds with a few beats from the original inserted into it occasionally for people to recognise. Not so with Happy - the club mix retains all the atmosphere of the original, while thrashing out the beats and making it more "dancable". Hats off to Mr Da Silva here - he clearly knows how not to ruin a good song. 10 out of 10.

Slipping the full length single into my CD-ROM drive, I see that it also contains the video which appears instantly on my screen. Some very dodgy dancing, but superb choreography on display here. Shot in LA, the video for Happy was made at The Conga Room, a Salsa club connected to La Boca Del Conga, the restaurant co-owned by Jennifer Lopez - and it sees the directorial debut of Mickey Rooney's son, who has previously choreographed work by Bjork among others. Not name dropping then, guys? It's nice to see little touches like the inclusion of the video adding value to the single - Polydor seem to be ahead of the pack here, we want more videos included as part of standard single releases! The only quibble I have is that the video is in Apple Quicktime .MOV format which plays with a little stutter in the sound on my PC (which is fairly new) - I would have rather had a Video CD. Even though VideoCDs are not very popular outside the Far East, most DVD players can play them, so why not?

Overall, this is more than a worthy addition to The Lighthouse Family's collection. It will certainly be played here at the KlubKat offices until the neighbours turn up to complain. You don't have to be a big soul fan to enjoy Happy - everybody but the most hardened headbangers should find something to cheer them up here. Especially after a hard day at the office.