BEAT HAPPENING: YOU TURN ME ON (1992)
1) Tiger Trap; 2) Noise; 3)
Pinebox Derby; 4) Teenage Caveman; 5) Sleepy Head; 6) You Turn Me On; 7)
Godsend; 8) Hey Day; 9) Bury The Hammer.
A tricky question here: will the Beat still be
Happening if, for once — just for once — the band actually decides to record
music that does not intentionally
sound bad? As in, quality hi-fi production, predominantly on-key vocals,
well-tuned guitars and all? The song structures may still be minimalistic as
hell, restricted by 2-3 chords at max, and the atmosphere may still smell of
lobotomy post-op, but the technical quality is improved to the point of there
actually being some technical
quality, and isn't that, like, sacrilegious for this band? Is there a point
here? Didn't we really all enjoy Beat Happening just because of the aural
masochism?
In any case, it is a good thing that they
recorded this, because otherwise we'd just have empty speculations — and here
is your actual chance to witness a cleaner, tighter, more overtly musical
variant of Beat Happening before it's too late. Additionally, there is one more
important change: the songs are much longer now on the average, varying from
around 4 to 6 minutes, with ʽGodsendʼ clocking in at an awesome-awful 9:28 —
and no, this is not some sort of «progressive» tendency, because the Spartan
melody stubbornly stays the same all the
time. If you can listen to our shit for two minutes, you might as well
listen for nine. Let the chords soak in.
My honest opinion is that the gamble pays off
quite well. In essence, this is the same old Beat Happening — Calvin, the
grumpy one, and Heather, the bright innocent one, with their guitar melodies
reflecting the two different personalities — and the improved sound quality is
a blessing for their vocal hooks, which, although repetitive, finally get a
chance to properly materialize and solidify (particularly when they prop them
up with multi-tracked vocals).
So you could say that the inexperienced kid of
seven years ago has finally matured here, advancing to the level of writing
some really densely encoded lyrical
observations on love and death and to the level of actually mastering some
professional techniques to set them to music — yet all the while remaining at
about the same level of rudimentary musical talent, and retaining the twee
innocence and the gloomy sarcasm of
yore. Actually, one thing that you can sense fairly well is that the
personality is almost completely split in two now: Heather and Calvin move in
such different directions that it almost feels uncomfortable to have something
as sweet, optimistic, and encouraging as ʽSleepy Headʼ and something as grinningly ghoulish as ʽPinebox Derbyʼ (a song
about hunting witches and sealing them in coffins, no less!) on the same album.
Or, a minute later, have to listen to the quasi-Satanic mantra of "turn me
on dead man, turn me on dead man" and then, right next to it, learn that
"it's just the things you do, you make it true, you're a godsend"
over the course of a friendly nine-minute mantra.
Indeed, approximately half of this album sounds
as if it were recorded in the dead of night at your local cemetery, while the
other half was recorded in broad daylight on some green lawn in Central Park.
The two halves lock together on the final track, ʽBury The Hammerʼ, a
relatively rare case of an actual duet between Calvin and Heather that urges to
"forgive and forget, it's time to make amends", as if the previous
forty minutes were spent in the state of a hostile rift, and now the creepy
cemetery joker and the sunshine-loving dame are coming together in one final embrace...
yeah, I could picture something like that.
And yes, the vocal hooks are nice. Not very original — just nice. For
the record, one bit of vocal modulation on ʽSleepy Headʼ is borrowed from the
Stones' ʽAs Tears Go Byʼ, and I'm sure that most of the other parts can be
traced back to their old-school pop roots as well, from Motown to the Kinks,
but they are reworking, not stealing, and matching the old hooks to their
modern personalities. Be it the mournful "we cry alone, we cry
alone" of ʽTeenage Cavemanʼ, or the adoring "you make it
true..." bit of ʽGodsendʼ, or the nonchalantly mumbled "bury the
hammer, bury the hammer" mantra, they're all a tiny tiny bit «new», and
they're all meaningfully attractive.
Overall, this is clearly a thumbs up kind of album — I hesitate
to call it the «culmination» of all things Beat Happening, since it objectively
sounds very differently from
everything they did previously; but as the end of the journey, it is at least
as important as the self-titled debut. You can easily skip the middle of the
road, but it makes sense — and a little intrigue — to take a look at how they
ended up if you already know how they started out. Ironically, this was not originally supposed to be Beat
Happening's swan song: it is more like one of those albums that unintentionally
come out looking like swan songs, and then subvert the band into breaking up because
there's just no way they could really pick it up and continue on. Another
record like that, and the spiral of mediocrity would start swirling again; but
as it is, You Turn Me On remains the
band's most immediately accessible and likeable record, and I'm glad they went
out with it.
Good God! I tried to sit through this but after 30 minutes my ears started throbbing. It's not their voices that bother me; I actually found Calvin's mumbling kinda funny, and those hooks you mentioned do indeed stand out. It's that GODAWFUL guitar sound. I can handle fuzz, feedback, drones, sludge, even detuning if it's done right. But this incessant, tinny, clanging sound... Ugh. I think I deserve extra credit for this one.
ReplyDeleteThis music is from Olympia Washington. Being an hour away from Seattle, it was always like a weird 2nd cousin to the hipper "grunge" scene happening to the north. I can't imagine listening to it outside of that context.
ReplyDeleteI have a soft spot for it only because I'm from the area and appreciated the wildly idealistic, difficult listening vibe that characterized Olympia at that time. I sat through many shows that were stupid noise by most any objective measure, but seemed highly intellectual and authentic in comparison to the Zepplinized Romanticism of Seattle's grunge.