Beat Happening
Dreamy

“The best part of sex is walking home holding hands”.

Olympia is in the north, among icy woods, on the border with British Columbia. Here you are happy because the cold cuts your hands. Here, in the state of Washington, the Beat Happening are born in 1982. Here their art is born.

Seminal like very few in the post-punk era, the trio consists of Calvin Johnson, Heather Lewis, and Bret Lunsford.

Their sources of inspiration are Stooges, Cramps, Young Marble Giants, and garage rock.

Johnson wrote for the fanzine Subterranean Pop, soon a crucial record label, and worked for the college radio. The three recorded a cassette and left for Japan. They didn’t become “Big in Japan”, but famous in Australia. They returned home, and after a few EPs, they released their self-titled first album in 1985. It was released by K, Johnson's anti-major label.

An album as sparse and unadorned as it is epochal.

An expression of a minimal and unpretentious sound. With a rebellious and light innocence.

Voices, guitar, drums. And no bass. A manifesto of the didactic dullness of lo-fi.

The follow-up is “Jamboree” from 1988. Screaming Trees’ Mark Lanegan is in the director's chair. The sound becomes a bit more noisy, but without betraying the immediate and exemplary impact of their naivety.

These are two legendary albums, of open carelessness later elevated to a system. The songs seem like demos or, at best, miniatures. But they know how to prodigiously touch certain primary strings. Like an ideal.

Superficial arrangements, surreal folk ballads, punk aesthetics, extreme reductionism are the distinguishing traits of all they want to be.

In 1989, “Black Candy” is released, “Black Sweetness”, which is twee pop, sadism, and gloom. Inspired, more and more, by the Cramps, they reach both pop peaks and silly teen-horror scenarios.

If with the fifth and last album (“You Turn Me On”, produced in '92 by Stuart Maxhom, ex-Young Marble Giants) they review their career through more complex plots, also approaching the minimalist raga of the Velvet Underground, the fourth work, “Dreamy”, is the middle ground.

The album has the misfortune of being released in 1991, a year of colossal works like “Loveless”, “Spiderland”, “Screamadelica”, “Nevermind”, “Laughing Stock”, “Out Of Time”, “The Black Album”, “Ten”, "Sailing the Seas of Cheese", "Achtung Baby", “Blue Lines”, “Goat”, “The Low End Theory”, “Gish”, "Blood Sugar Sex Magik".

Johnson seems distracted. He is very active as a record producer and even organizes an alternative to Lollapalooza, an event he deems too trendy, inventing the International Pop Underground and gathering Fugazi, Bikini Kill, L7, Built To Spill, Melvins, Mecca Normal.

“Dreamy” is a work uncertain between maturity and naivety. So naive as to appear almost sophisticated. All ten tracks are co-written by the three. However, Lewis' contribution to songwriting is significant and sketches horizons of melancholy. Sometimes the sound is less raw and lean. The three take turns, as always, on the instruments. The lyrics remain sardonic. The production is by Steve Fisk (future Halo Benders).

Calvin Johnson still pleases us with his baritone, deep voice, with his indolent, aseptic, or dark singing. Heather Lewis, on the other hand, with her child-like, slippery voice and a sweet, mournful singing.

Among the tracks: sensual, convulsive is “Nancy Sin”, where the electric guitar riff is sharp and scratchy; Johnson plays the possessed Iggy Pop, just as in “Cry For Shadow”.

In “Left Behind” Lewis sings with an evasive and reckless tenderness, but without great vocal skills. The accompaniment is minimal, puffed, repetitive. The song appears as a nursery rhyme (“Eyes bright/ always right/ big strong fight”). “I got my own way/ Left behind/ Left behind/ Left behind/ The dirt stays inside with me”. “Faccio a modo mio/ Lascio tutto indietro/ Lascio alle spalle/ Lascio da parte/ Ma lo sporco rimane dentro di me”).

“Collide” is a lullaby with clumsy accelerations.

The most beautiful tune, finally, is “Fortune Cookie Prize”, one of the most typical compositions of Beat Happening, at least for the “half” Lewis. The accompaniment is dominated by drums, the guitar moves with pleasant cadences, simple and effective strumming. The child-like sound is at its peak here. Usually, Johnson sang the most notable pieces of the LPs, such as “Our Secret”, “Bad Seeds”, “Indian Summer”, “Cast a Shadow”, “Black Candy”, “Tiger Trap”, but here it is her turn (her other arrows are “In Between” and “Godsend”).

“Dreamy” is not their most representative album, indeed. At least half a point below the others. But it is perhaps the one where Lewis expresses herself at her best. The cover photo is commendable, too.

Between minimalist innocence and measured irreverence, between rock and pop, between love for the Cramps and twee whimpers, American indie, with these three nerds from Olympia, WA, nonetheless reaches a transversal perfection.

Then their spontaneous spirit, without technique but highly inspired, places them at the fore of the lo-fi aesthetic, after the unparalleled amateurism of Half Japanese and the uncontaminated integrity of Jadek.

“You got me black and blue inside of you

I'm racing to the edge of my chain”.

If you go to Seattle, remember to stop by Olympia. Don’t bring gloves. Let the cold cut your hands. It seems to make you happy. Then, edginess is creative.