Once ETA closed in December 2023, the IVtet immediately graduated to Zebulon, a 200-cap club in L.A.’s Frogtown neighborhood, and once The Way Out of Easy blew up among critics and fans, the group ventured out to play other midsize rooms like Brooklyn’s Public Records and the Garden Club in Atlanta. On August 20, 2025, they were booked at Lodge Room, which holds 500 people and is half a block from where ETA stood on Figueroa Street.
Happy Today is just as remarkably hypnotic as the IVtet’s previous documents, but it’s perhaps more impressive to hear how commanding they’ve become as a unit. On both sidelong tracks, they take their time to establish a vibe, each member finding the right time to add another layer. “Like Swimwear” starts with Parker plucking a delicate figure, eventually sustaining certain notes to build a delicate, droning chord. Johnson follows suit, but plays a dueling figure, as Butterss and Bellerose methodically add more accents into the rhythmic backbone. Eventually, the two fully lock together, allowing Parker and Johnson the space to wriggle around, sometimes finding the cracks and crevices in the motorik churn, other times enveloping it in clouds of pure tone. Johnson experiments with chorus and reverb effects, giving his saxophone the impression of fading in and out of view.
The title track builds at an even slower pace, swirling around itself like a Lonnie Liston Smith or Alice Coltrane deep cut for the better part of 10 minutes before finally breaking into a canter. Parker’s guitar all but dissipates into a constellation of gentle sine waves while Butterss and Johnson solo against each other. Bellerose adds a breathy coating of percussive textures, and you can imagine all four with their eyes closed, playing without even thinking. By the end, Bellerose and Butterss are back in a pocket, and Johnson and Parker are trading knotted, ratcheting phrases back and forth; it’s hard to remember that it all started with a mere wisp.
During each piece, there’s a moment about halfway through where Bellerose transitions from bubbly, tom-heavy rudiments into a straight-ahead Stax pattern, and each time, a few members of the audience cannot contain their glee. Their joyful, stank-face shouts come from deep in the crowd and echo off the Lodge Room’s ceiling, and you’re reminded that this band is playing this music in front of hundreds of enchanted people. Gonzales and Parker leave close to 30 seconds of applause at the end of both tracks, and the audience’s joyful hooting and hollering feels as astonished as it does celebratory. The IVtet’s power is in presence, both in their ability to access it onstage together and engender it in a crowd, no matter the size. The simple act of finding space with other people can help you touch the infinite, even for just 20 minutes at a time.
