Jamboree (Beat Happening album)

Jamboree is the second album by Beat Happening, released in 1988 through K Records/Rough Trade Records. All songs were produced by Steve Fisk with assistance from Screaming Trees members Mark Lanegan and Gary Lee Conner (who plays a brief guitar solo on "Midnight a Go-Go"), except "Cat Walk," produced by Patrick Maley, and "The This Many Boyfriends Club," recorded live by Rich Jensen. The album marks a darker approach to the Twee pop for which the band is known, due largely to a thicker production than is present on the group's earlier recordings and the dominance of tracks written by Calvin Johnson, while Heather Lewis only provides vocals on two songs, the uncharacteristically brash "In Between" and the more typically understated "Ask Me." At the time of the album's release, Calvin described Jamboree's sound as "dark and sexy." Still, the band retained their emphasis on exuberance over musicianship, as Bret Lunsford stated in an interview that, while recording album opener "Bewitched," his guitar string got stuck on a protruding screw and he continued to play through the song, hitting the string a bit harder until it became unstuck.

This album was reportedly one of Kurt Cobain's favorites. Two tracks from the album, "Bewitched" and "Indian Summer," were listed as essential listening in Pitchfork Media's 2005 article on Twee Pop entitled "Twee as Fuck." "Indian Summer" is perhaps the group's best-known song, as it was famously covered by Dream Pop group Luna, whose lead singer, Dean Wareham, joked in The Shield Around the K, a documentary film on the history of Calvin's K Records, that the song was "indie's 'Knocking on Heaven's Door'-- everybody's done it." The song was also covered by Ben Gibbard for the the soundtrack to the Kurt Cobain documentary About a Son. Allmusic.com said of the album "each cut is a marvel of innocence and ingenuity."