With The Three EPs, The Beta Band opened their own doors to artistic expression, allowing them to vary their palate of sounds from folk, electronica, psychedelia, and even trip-hop. The album (if it can be called that) was for me one of the most poignant contacts I have had with music. Though drawn out, every track stood out in its own right and contributed to the wonderful, albeit perhaps coincidental, cohesion of the album. Novel yet oddly familiar, it struck a remote chord in me that few other records had done before, or have since. It promised with steadfast certainty that excellent things were to come.
Though the band themselves criticized their debut self-titled album, it managed to land them a place on tour with Radiohead. Their follow-up, Hot Shots II, saw the band shifting towards minimalist pieces-- some successful, some not so much, yet always captivating.
Needless to say, I expected heaven and more from their third full-length, Heroes To Zeroes. Instead, I found myself asking why I was not equally moved, why, despite its innovativeness, I was not taken aback, as I had been other times. There is very little experimentation on the album, at least in relation to previous albums, but there is also a wider spectrum of songs. The production is superb, but is not key to the songs. It's as if more thought was put into the songs themselves than what flourishes would go around them.
Notably, the album makes an effort to instate melody and hooks into its songs. This is especially obvious on tracks like "Easy" and "Out-Side" -- which is no atrocity, really, seeing as they are both pulled off so well (the latter being so infectious as to appear fit be degraded and run in a VH1 commercial). The last two tracks, "Simple" and "Pure For," however, exemplify just the kind of insipidity that can result when The Beta Band looses its willingness to fuck around with its songs, and relies solely on making a pop melody.
The single "Assessment" is one of the most successful tracks on the album. Unlike the opening tracks of previous albums, it makes its statement from the outset, and doesn't let up until about halfway through where it lifts its head to catch its breath, only to dive back in with guitar to augment the song's already powerful attack. The first minutes of "Liquid Bird," attempt the same effect, but fall short, providing nothing more than a forced effort to be dynamic. But, as with most other songs on the album, it starts in one place and ends in another miles away -- and, luckily, where it ends is a wonderfully elegant land of trip-hop and strings, reminiscent of Hot Shot's II's, "Squares."
The stand-out track here, however, is, "Lion Thief," to which I will gladly devote the concluding paragraph. For all the reservations I had about this album, and all the side-stepping and back-pedaling I did with my review rating, this song was the only one I never thought twice about. Instantly memorable, yet also revealing upon further listens, it conjures up Talk Talk circa Spirit Of Eden, only instead of droning for minutes upon end, it manages to encapsulate a mystical acoustic guitar and piano feel alongside an absolutely remarkable Middle-Eastern-like drum pattern in less then four minutes. Were The Beta Band's catalogue not already inundated with gems, I would have no qualms calling it the band's high point. The rest of the album never does reach similar heights, but several times it does come close. And, for that alone the album can be regarded as nothing but another Beta Band success.
1. Assessment
2. Space
3. Lion Thief
4. Easy
5. Wonderful
6. Troubles
7. Out-Side
8. Space Beatle
9. Rhododendron
10. Liquid Bird
11. Simple
12. Pure For