There's a reason that shampoo bottles tell you to rinse and repeat. And no, it isn't just to make you buy more shampoo. Of course, in this day and age, when hating all things corporate is "cool," it's easy to write off this advice as shameless commercialism. But if those Herbal Essences commercials have taught us anything, it's that the shampoo manufacturers of the world want nothing more than to make us happy. Is it so hard to believe that they just want to share with us the wisdom they have gained after years of shampoo production? Certainly they aren't recommending the endless, scalp bleed-inducing loops of rinse and repeat that have become the stuff of urban legend. They just want to share with you the wisdom that careful repetition can often make things decidedly more potent.
I don't know what kind of shampoo Stephen Mason uses. If the snazzy picture on the back of Hot Shots II is any indication, it's probably pretty good stuff. And the ten dense, smooth tracks on Hot Shots II reveal that Stephen Mason has been paying a good deal of attention to the Zen of the shampoo bottle: rinse and repeat.
While rinsing away the dirt and slop of his past may leave Mason feeling clean and fresh, it washes off one of the key elements of the Betas' trademark sound: the almost unparalleled zaniness and willingness to fuck around. The bizarre, layered samples, the sloppy playing-- all these have been cleansed from Mason's mane. The resulting album bears a closer resemblance in general mood and structure to Mason's most recent King Biscuit Time outing than to any previous Beta Band material.
Which brings us to the latter half of shampoo bottle wisdom, and the half that helps makes Hot Shots II so good: repeat. Even if rinsing is robbing Mason and his cohorts of some of the beautiful weirdness displayed on previous records, Hot Shots II is a much more comfortable-sounding record than The Three EPs or the group's 1999 self-titled full-length debut. Just about every song here fits nicely into an organic, pulsing, repetitive groove. It's much more densely and diversely orchestrated than King Biscuit Time, but much more contained and deliberate than any previous Beta Band releases.
This new contained and repetitive direction often yields amazing results. "Al Sharp", the standout from Hot Shots II, is one of the richest-sounding songs the Betas have ever produced. With xylophones, sampled strings, a groovy bassline, and some flat-out gorgeous multi-tracked vocals, there's very little not to love about the track. Especially when it contains lyrics like, "Or [is it] because the power ranger robots in the skies have called a war/ To you, honey?" As with the best of Hot Shots II, there's something beautiful, meditative, and contemplative about "Al Sharp". Plus, the song simply sounds awesome, the result being perhaps the only Beta Band song on this album that can unequivocally stand up to the best material from The Three EPs or the self-titled record.
On the darker side of Hot Shots II is "Gone", a sparse guitar and piano-driven ballad that, were it twice as long and less linear, would sound right at home on The Three EPs. Balancing out the motionless sound of "Gone" is the near-epic, very much alive "Dragons". Another quasi-love-ballad, "Dragons" rides a whacked-out, reverb-drenched drumbeat and washed out synthesizers to a beautiful crescendo of multitracked vocals and samples.
Splitting the difference between "Gone" and "Dragons" is "Life", a downcast but decidedly goofy number about unrequited love featuring string swells, synthesizers, and cowbells. "Life" segues perfectly into Hot Shots II's prettiest track, "Eclipse", an appealingly long-winded, spacy musing on books, pizza pie, and questions and answers. The song's rousing bridge, "We all live together on a little round ball," recalls "Yellow Submarine", and the song's final line, which finally brings together its themes provides a perfect ending for an album that never takes itself too seriously.
That is, "Eclipse" would make a great closer for an album that never takes itself too seriously. But for some ungodly reason, "Won", a pretty straightforward but hideously awful hip-hop track that has nothing to do with anything else on the album was slapped onto the end as a "bonus". For the most part, I'm not one to bitch about the inclusion of extra tracks, but the awkward, out-of-place "Won" really does fuck up the flow of Hot Shots II, and stifles what could have been a great closing.
While it certainly doesn't live up to the adventurousness of its predecessors, Hot Shots II is a pretty damned fine album, and easily surpasses previous outings in the realm of accessibility. It also does away with the bizarre rap numbers and twelve-minute psych pastiches that put so many eager listeners off in the first place. To me, though, that thrown-together sound was one of the things that made the Beta Band's music so exciting, hinting at the possibility of wacky revolutions and violent takeovers by silly string-armed bandits. Rinsing and repeating is working well for Stephen Mason, but it would no doubt serve him well to work up a more turbulent, frothy lather next time.
