If they loved the Beta Band so much, why did people give them so much shit while they were still alive? Their early development was so startling-- from pleasant late 90s stoner-hop to a startling mix of folk, kraut, and acid house in less than six months-- that we just assumed they could go anywhere. Then they released an album that did go anywhere, and they got castigated for it. Then they toned down the shit-talking and liberties-taking and accentuated the beat-science and hippie-gentleness, and they got castigated for it. Then they released an album of pleasant, conventional indie rock and couldn't even get castigated. They were as exhausted as we were and broke up.
It's pretty clear they weren't the assholes here: There's not a single band in the past year with the balls-- or lack of sense, your call-- to release a debut album as overgrown with ideas (not always good ones, mind you) as The Beta Band. And in 2001, what Hot Shots II was offering-- guitars meet Timbaland, to be reductive-- was pretty much all many of us wanted from a rock band.
A best-of released in the aftermath of an ignominious break-up always feels a little less radiant than a best-of from a band who went out on a high note. The Best of the Beta Band is a funny beast. Collecting singles, it should ideally give haters what they always wanted: All the band's styles in one place. Unfortunately, it has the probably unintended effect of shaving off the shag. Missing an obnoxious piece of audience baiting like "The Beta Band Rap" or the cuckoo twentysomething-crisis of "Round the Bend" means you're not getting the Betas as they were.
Sequenced chronologically, The Best of the Beta Band features a whopping five tracks from their last album, Heroes to Zeros. So it's missing a few choice cuts, though exactly which ones are up for debate. They could have made room for live-staple "The House Song", the mournful, rain-soaked "Push It Out", or the playful "Brokenupadingdong". The only thing it's incontrovertibly lacking is "Sequinsizer", where over a punchy groove they weave lonely brass, Eno-ish textures, and frontman Steve Mason's voice cut-up like a flu-ridden diva in a Todd Edwards house production.
"Dry the Rain" starts us off, and if the Betas had stopped there, they'd be languishing in the 99-cent import CD single bins with Gomez and Travis. "She's the One" stretches the strums of the Champion Versions EP across a full 70mm print, pumping the mix full of Technicolor detail. It's not saying much except "I'm in love," but it does so with such swirling, ringing conviction that even professional cynics like me have used it as a soundtrack to going head over heels. "Dr. Baker" starts out hungover in bed watching drips of piano against the window, but, by the second verse, a lost calliope has burst into the bedroom.
"It's Not Too Beautiful" is a Beatles tune with Q-bert (the video game sprite, not the turntablist) on production before a sample from John Barry's score for "The Black Hole" confuses the axis entirely. "To You Alone" is where Mason's interest in the plastic r&b; triplets that were everywhere at the turn of the last century first took hold. It's very rare to find a band both open to what's going on in the wider world and willing to give it their own spin (in this case, Faust-like spiraling drum swirls and kosmiche guitar) without coming off either cynical or clueless. It was a sound they would embrace fully on Hot Shots II, and the tracks that represent that album here, such as "Squares", are ankle-deep hip-hop grooves and disorienting texturally. "Gone", also from Hot Shots, sends a spare piano line wending through a humid fog of reverb. Mason sounds positively forlorn.
It is a ridiculous crime that the sparkling psych/dancehall admixture "Broke", presented here in its single mix, cuts out before the extended groove (the best part-- complete with "Sleng Teng" bassline!) kicks in. "Assessment" brazenly recycles the riff from U2's "I Will Follow". Outright theft wears poorly on them, though the blazing horns at the end make up for it somewhat. "Easy" gets by on a croaking organ/harpsichord groove and not much else. "Wonderful" is the weakest thing here, a barely there ambi-ballad. ("Troubles" isn't much better. The Betas' hippie-speak can go beyond charming to, you know, hippie-ish.) But "Simple" buffered a particularly lonely two-month stretch in my life, and though it skirts banality, a chorus of "the trouble with your own thing is you end up on your own" is both deeply affecting and a metaphor for the entire Beta Band project.
If live discs are the definition of "for fans only," then a live disc included with a best-of is the definition of pointlessness. Yet live was clearly where the Betas gave everyone what they wanted. People could sing along together to "Dry the Rain". A melodramatic song like "It's Not Too Beautiful" could be extended past the breaking point. On record, the Hot Shots II songs can often provoke a response like the one I heard from a co-worker: "Wow, I haven't heard trip-hop in forever." Here they add a freak-out guitar solo to "Squares", all to the good. The drum circle workouts of "Inner Meet Me" and "The House Song" make sense in commune with an audience. "Dr. Baker" becomes a cruising rock track.
Judging by this year's King Biscuit Time single, Mason hasn't totally abandoned the "beats + indie" formula, and good on him. Maybe he just needs a little time to regroup-- get his head together in the country, as it were. If the Betas promise to release another record, we can promise to afford them the respect they deserve. Even if it's just that vaguely apocryphal second disc of mountaintop THC jamz that was supposed to be appended to The Beta Band. They were always so cute when stoned.
