Beat Happening

The bare-bones instrumentation and childlike innocence of the Olympia, WA, trio Beat Happening helped define a certain strain of indie pop in the ’80s and ’90s. Formed in 1982 by Calvin Johnson, Heather Lewis, and Bret Lunsford, Beat Happening played around the Pacific Northwest and in Japan for a few years, borrowing drums when they could. Their spare arrangements, coupled with Johnson’s deep bass vocal, made their first two cassette releases college-radio curiosities. Johnson had founded the independent label K Records the same year that Beat Happening came together; K released the band’s self-titled full-length, a 10-song, 19-minute collection of their brief yet oddly catchy songs, in 1985. Three years later, they released Jamboree, which brought a darker element into their jaunty, rhythm-forward music. After a joint EP with Screaming Trees (whose members Mark Lanegan and Gary Lee Conner had produced Jamboree), Beat Happening released Black Candy in 1989. The early-’90s alt-rock gold rush, as well as the Johnson-produced International Pop Underground Festival, raised Beat Happening’s profile, and the band’s fourth and fifth albums, 1991’s Dreamy and 1992’s You Turn Me On, were co-released by Sub Pop. The Beat Happening catalog was reissued and re-released in various forms over the years, with the 2015 double album Look Around compiling band-selected cuts from across their discography.