Fan video:

Guadalcanal Diary’s second album, 1986′s Jamboree has both a slightly darker and a slightly more humorous tone that its predecessor. While it doesn’t have a song that caught fire with college radio quite as much as “Watusi Rodeo” or “Trail of Tears, it does have some excellent songs and is a good, moody listen.

The album kicks off with “Pray For Rain,” which sounds a bit like R.E.M.’s “Feeling Gravity’s Pull” to me. The song would not be out of place on a Church album – there were a dozen bands that made albums worth of songs that sound exactly like this one in ’86 and ’87. This is Guadalcanal Diary’s only song in their particular vein.

Guadalcanal Diary opened their three other albums with uptempo, high energy rockers – “Trail of Tears,” “Look Up” and the upcoming “Litany.” Its interesting that they chose to kick off Jamboree with this dark, distant sounding mid-tempo number.