Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”

That’s a quote from Marcel Proust, that is. Not one of his most profound, granted, but The Little Ones would probably appreciate it. While not - at least we think - sickly Frenchmen transported into the past by dipping a piece of cake in a cup of tea, the Californians value happiness and those who make us happy just as highly. Indeed, they are the happy-makers themselves.

With a sound that is sunny, whimsical, colourful and jaunty (try finding a minor chord here) and lyrics to do with beaches, barbeques and other joyous exploits of youth, The Little Ones have earned themselves a reputation as the cheeriest bunch of power-pop auteurs (emerging somewhere between The Shins and Brendan Benson) this side of The Beach Boys’ Christmas Album. It might seem hideously twee to some, but let’s not forget the fact we live in a musical epoch plagued by irony, cynicism and knowingness. Sometimes it’s nice to indulge in something purely euphoric right? Right?
Well, not everyone seems to think so. Earlier this year The Little Ones released their debut album Morning Tide to mixed online reviews, many made sick with rage at the band’s temerity to sing about their mirth. One humourless scribe wrote that every song is “laced with a smile so fake and ignorant you want to punch it until it bleeds something real” and, bizarrely, “so green it wouldn’t be able to tell you who Robert Mugabe is.” That is, of course, the prerequisite for any band before they appear on Letterman these days.

Accusations of naivety and a lack of depth will always be levelled at the Los Angeles quartet, but it barely matters. Morning Tide is an explosion of fun and melody, even without a view on Darfur. They even make steel drums, on ‘Boracay’, sound great. Happily, the band themselves are unfazed by criticism of their ecstasy.

“We get that every now and then,” says keyboardist Lee LaDonceur, “and our response is usually ‘we wouldn’t be doing this if we weren’t happy about it’. We love the art of pop music, and we’re naturally happy, so it just kind of comes out that way. We don’t mind showing our happy side, ‘cos we’re really happy guys.”

LaDonceur describes Morning Tide as a “rejoicing set” and “still up-tempo but more mature” than their first EP, Sing Song, which came out in 2006. Indeed, The Little Ones’ story, for all their sunny disposition, has been somewhat fraught with difficulty.

The four current members – LaDonceur is joined by Ed Reyes on vocals, Ian Moreno on guitar, and Brian Reyes on bass – have known each other for ten years, though they only formed the band in the mid-noughties, putting out Sing Song on their own label, Branches. It was reasonably successful in both the States and among a few in-tune publications in Europe (NME gave it 9/10, for what it’s worth), despite a wish to distance themselves from the hectic indie merry-go-around of Los Angeles which, with its big corporate tendencies, seemed unsuitable for the simple pleasures of The Little Ones. A wise decision, given what was to come.

“When we first started we wanted to separate ourselves from LA,” says LaDonceur. “We saw what was going on and didn’t want to be part of certain scenes. We couldn’t get shows at all, we got booked for a show in New York before we got anything in LA.

“Now it’s great though, there’s a ton of support from people who have heard the story about us being dropped. There’s been a lot of hometown support, and I wouldn’t expect that from LA, in a way.”

The story of them being dropped is the other defining feature of The Little Ones’ adventure so far. After the EP had turned heads, Astralwerks and Heavenly Recordings teamed up to offer the band a deal, under the umbrella of EMI… “And basically as the industry fell through a few months ago, EMI took their red pen and drew a line through The Little Ones. We had Morning Tide in the works and ready to go. Luckily they gave us the record back.”

After legal wrangling and what not, Heavenly managed to release the album in the UK, with Chop Shop taking it on back home. All the more reason to be happy, which might explain the fact there are even more handclaps, cheering and shouting on the album than the EP. And there was plenty on the EP.

Despite the fact LaDonceur insists his band’s happy sound is nothing more than a natural extension of their own cheery attitudes, there is one very deliberate ploy they have to keep their songs catchy. Uncle Lee’s Rule of Feet is a rule LaDonceur introduced to the band after his sister had just given birth (hence the uncle bit, obviously).

“At that point we were trying to write songs,” he explains, “but we noticed that the only way the songs would work was when someone would do something particularly well, be it a drum beat or a guitar part, and someone was moving their feet or bobbing their head or tapping along, and I just said ‘that’s it! That’s the rule’. If someone’s not tapping their feet or nodding their head then it’s not gonna work. And the rule has worked, although there are some slower songs on the album.”

This rule has led to about half of the mood and feeling of Morning Tide. The other half is down to the specific part of the world The Little Ones come from, and the musical heritage of California. While they are hardly comparable to Brian Wilson, they do adopt that blue sky thinking of The Beach Boys’ early years, where holding hands and strolling on the beach are the only life objectives. Escapism it certainly is, West Coast style.

“Aw yeah, it’s something we grew up with, I don’t think we can really fight it,” says LaDonceur of the ‘Californian sound’. “I think it fits in with the happy vibe – you know, it’s time for summer. In some of our songs you get that.

Then there’s the way the guitars are kind of shimmery, kind of like The Byrds. It just comes naturally to us.”

And even if they aren’t clued in with international politics (which they might be, for all we know), escapism, especially when it sounds this good, remains essential. For just a little while anyway.