Today, guitarist / bandleader Jeff Parker releases Happy Today, the third album from his long-running ETA IVtet, via International Anthem / Nonesuch. Recorded and mixed live at Lodge Room in Los Angeles on August 20, 2025, Happy Today features Parker and the rest of the IVtet — drummer Jay Bellerose, bassist Anna Butterss, and saxophonist Josh Johnson — engaged in their signature, minimalist, form-bending improvisational syntax across two sprawling, LP side-length pieces.

Listen to and purchase Happy Today here.

In a Pitchfork profile on Parker, Grayson Haver Currin wrote of Happy Today: “With the rhythmic elasticity of a beat tape and the tonal splendor of almost everything he has ever done, it is a 44-minute synthesis of Parker’s last six decades.” Read the full feature here.

An album-length concert film, captured by director Charlie Weinmann at the Lodge Room performance that became Happy Today, will be released May 29. Weinmann’s noirish document offers a rare opportunity to see Parker and the elusive ETA IVtet in action; watch a preview here. To celebrate the album’s release, twenty record stores will be hosting screenings of the Happy Today film over the course of this weekend. Find the full list of record stores that will be hosting screenings here, and check their respective websites and social accounts for details on dates and times.

Also today at 12pm CST is a virtual Bandcamp listening party joined by Parker, Butterss, Johnson, and Bellerose, RSVP here.

Photo of ETA IVtet by Sam Lee

The past two years have been productive and busy as ever for Parker, who has long been a prominent player within a wide-range of music communities, in jazz and beyond. In 2025, he released new music and toured with his long-standing experimental rock band Tortoise and brought the ETA IVtet in for an NPR Tiny Desk performance. Additionally, Parker and two other members of the IVet — Butterss and Johnson — are featured on Flea’s solo debut album, which was released March 27 on Nonesuch Records. The album, Honora, also was produced by Johnson.

Happy Today is ETA IVtet’s first recording made outside of the now-shuttered, widely-beloved Los Angeles micro-club ETA. Part laboratory, part low-stakes proving ground, ETA was where the band’s  collective sound coalesced over the course of a storied seven-year Monday night residency that yielded two critically-acclaimed records — 2022’s Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy and 2024’s The Way Out of Easy.

Recorded and mixed in situ at Lodge Room by engineer Bryce Gonzales with a custom-made analog mixer and Nagra stereo tape recorder, Happy Today captures a bright moment during dark times. As Parker shares: “2025 was a very difficult year for me and my family. Dealing with being displaced from the Eaton fires for eight months, and the kind of toll that instability took on my family’s mental health and general outlook, coupled with Donald Trump being back in office and basically making life miserable for everyone… There was a lot of sadness and despair. But feeling the sense of community that we created with our concert, and later hearing the recording, seeing the beautiful footage that had been shot and the photographs of such joy to be back in that space and to be making music again: It was a very happy moment. So I called the record Happy Today. It’s meant to be a statement of joy.”

With Happy Today, that sound—honed in such an intimate setting—is scaled up for a much larger audience and space at Lodge Room. But the essential formula remains the same, and has the same hypnotic, deeply-tuned listening effect. The almost alchemical musical communication creates a feeling of connection not only between the band members but also between the band and their audience—an ongoing trust exercise that invites listeners to become part of the exchange, and experience the joy of deep listening.

In August, Parker and the ETA IVtet will do a run of shows that includes a three-night stand at Lodge Room in Los Angeles. Tickets and info below.