AMG Review of Happy Hour

Stephen Thomas Erlewine
All Music Guide

Five years have passed between 2004's Seventy Two & Sunny and its 2009 follow-up Happy Hour -- apparently not enough time for Uncle Kracker to re-conceive his way-mellow music but just enough time for him to adopt Auto-Tune and employ it on an interpolation of Whitesnake's "Here I Go Again." This sums up Uncle Kracker's aesthetic, how he channels hair metal and commercial hip-hop through soft rock pretty well, and there's surely some appeal to his easy grooves with his sing-song and sunshine choruses, some so ingratiating they worm into the subconscious no matter how much you resist.