Now here’s what they call one of them ironical situations. As a rule I’ve always loathed that whole precious, “cuddle-core” strain of independent rock music that flourished in the 1980s. You know, fey liberal arts majors in sweaters from upper middle class households strumming chimy chord changes, so shy they might just urinate their $100 jeans if you so much as gave them the stinkeye. Surely never grew a callous due to manual labor. I remember, when living in North Carolina in the 1990s, waiting for the buyer in a Chapel Hill used bookstore to raise some spending cash by selling some records, and off to my side was this delicate little creature of a student, singing his mousy little songs to a smug audience of coffee drinkers. It made the blue collar metalhead in me want to go Belushi on the kid.
SOOO, imagine the situation as someone so in contempt of this species of entitled sleeve-wipers to be into a band like Beat Happening. A band from one of the steaming breeding grounds of this musical archetype, Olympia, Washington. A band with two jock-looking normies and a dykey chick right out of Art School Confidential. An intentionally-amateur-sounding band who write songs with two chords and nursery rhyme melodies, and switch instruments to sound “worse.” Does not compute, but there it is. Since their earlier stuff never hit me, I’m thinking it’s the deft touch of producer Steve Fisk who sprinkled the right shades of musical fairy dust on this record that did it. Also, these guys were one of the earlier artists of their generation to reference the non-teen pre-hippy sixties as cultural touchstones (it took me years to realize Calvin Johnson took his whole baritone singing style from Lee Hazlewood). I get nauseous and angry when hearing any other groups that sound like this, but Beat Happening makes me happy. Go figure.
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