| Warp + Weft: The Beta Band :: The Three EPs |
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| Written by Steve McPherson | |
| Wednesday, September 12, 2007 at 10:22 AM | |
 The Beta Band :: The Three EPs The Three EPs Astralwerks 1999 There's an old chestnut about The Velvet Underground that says that while not many people heard their early records, everyone who did started a band. But it doesn't just apply to the Velvet Underground. Back in 1999, The Beta Band were the darlings of Q, the British music magazine to which I had pledged my allegiance, sick as I was of reading the same three and three-and-a-half star reviews in Rolling Stone and Spin. (Since then, Spin has improved considerably, actually, and Rolling Stone, well, they actually have better political coverage than music coverage, but at least they've got something.) The Scottish quartet (who, after early instability, settled into the lineup of John Maclean, Richard Greentree, Steve Mason, and Robin Jones—Gordon Anderson plays drums on the first of The Three EPs' three EPs) were purveyors of a kind of new/old sound, a thick and bright conglomeration of folky acoustic guitars and simple melodies, hip-hop scratches and beats, and collaged sound elements from myriad sources. It was called pastoral, it was called folk hop, and it collided in places with another Scottish act, Boards of Canada, who melded some of the same sunny folk touches into their cracked and dusty electronica. But we know the British press is fickle and often borderline psychotic in the way they lionize the most mainstream of drivel (Robbie Williams, anyone?) while simultaneously getting it right about lots of out-of-the way groups who never get play on this side of the Atlantic, so it wasn't surprising when The Beta Band didn't take off in the States. In '99, the bulk of American music was suffering from a distinct gap between the appearance of earnestness and any actual songwriting talent—think Nickelback, Creed, Staind, etc. This is before The Strokes, keep in mind, who, while distinctly a band with style over substance, at least brought some style to the mainstream table when they got there. Meanwhile, the mainstream in the UK (notwithstanding Mr. Williams, which, by the way, doesn't really count because the British have learned they can have their guilty pleasures right alongside their serious talent without freaking out about who's better) had its attention turned towards Radiohead, Massive Attack, Travis (believe me, it was a revelation at the time—remember: Shania Twain, Ricky Martin), Blur, and soon, Coldplay. And so the U.S. slept. Until High Fidelity came out, which featured a scene where John Cusack's character is spinning a disc on his finger when he whispers, "I'm about to sell five copies of The Beta Band's Three EPs." He cues up the fuzzily anthemic coda to "Dry the Rain" and instantly people start nodding and chatting and the world is just all sunshine and kittens. It's basically spot on/completely unfair to The Beta Band, who are much more than just a great hook, but are also open and warm and so laidback you could balance a glass on their chests. Scenes like that one in High Fidelity or the similar one involving The Shins in Garden State become complex when they begin to feed back into the actual bands and the actual world, but that's not really the point here. They had buzz, and soon, they had a little following amongst some of the hippie/jam-band fans I knew at the time. Soon, their first full length record came out and they quickly disowned it for being rushed by the label. This didn't help sales. And then they laid low and Steve Mason worked on King Biscuit Time and then they kind of came back with Heroes to Zeroes, and then they broke up. But oddly, the sound they had crafted started popping up in unexpected places, and this is where it gets meta. I'm not going to assume any direct influence here, but it's hard not to hear echoes of what The Beta Band started in what bands like Animal Collective (and the solo work of Panda Bear—especially the work of Panda Bear), Grizzly Bear, and The Shins (recently) have been doing. What's both wonky and fascinating about it is that gap in there—that space from when they seemed about to break out to when these other bands rose to critical acclaim last year. Given their organic, mulchy music, it seems almost appropriate that the seeds they dropped took a couple years to come to fruition—it's something that seems to happen to bands that are ahead of their time. In 1999, they were perceived as falling into the lineage of jam bands, and it seemed fair at the time. After all, another British band with an auspicious debut (and a Mercury Prize in 1998), Gomez, eventually shed their lo-fi roots and embraced a fuller and more traditionally jam-friendly sound. Listening to The Three EPs now, though, it's apparent where their ideas about music are headed. "Dry the Rain" is as soft and sussurating as it ever was, but the sound of the dusty drum sample that opens it is less out of place now. It's not like they were the first people to combine beats and acoustic guitars, but what's key is that they were doing it right as digital home recording was really coming into its own, and what "Dry the Rain" seems to be broadcasting in retrospect is a message that this is possible—that all you need is a crate of records, an acoustic guitar, a good ear, and a computer to make this stuff. Mason's laconic voice is casual and comfortable, the instrumentation is minimal but generous in its support of the melody, which builds its way up slowly to the coda. The coda is just flat-out gorgeous: the horns, the way it's already there before you realize it's even begun, the lyrics. The words are precisely the kind of thing that sounds cliched on paper but is elevated into poetry in the context of the song ("If there's something inside that you want to say / say it out loud: It'll be OK. / I will be all right, I will be all right / I will be all right, I will be all right."), and there's a very small number of artists that really carry off that kind of transformation. So yes, The Beta Band is euphonious. They're not angular or loud or abrasive, and they strum a lot of acoustic guitars, but what sticks out is the very slight sloppiness of the proceedings as the EPs unfold. "I Know" is pinned to a bass line that doesn't sit quite right, and the drums keep missing beats—not enough to make it really jarring, but enough to keep you on your toes. A couple tentative DJ scratches in "Dog Got a Bone" lead not into a drum break, but into a gentle wash of accordion. There's lame beatboxing; there are barn owl calls; there's a song built around looped snippets of singing. That shiftiness, that looseness is really the album's defining characteristic. It has an endearing shagginess that isn't an afterthought, but is rather the thing that makes everything else possible. When there's a sudden blast of French rapping in "The House Song" it makes sense because your expectations have been thrown completely off kilter. And so that wooliness is now stepping to the fore in the work of a clutch of bands that are taking cues from folk, from roots music, from blues, without being slavish imitators. The ability to crib from source material in creating albums now is elemental—sampling, looping, the ability to record digitally anywhere, these things are changing the way records are made, but the real revolution is the slow one here. As musicians learn how to use these tools as instruments the very fabric of music shifts slowly away from a clean professionalism and towards a wanton amateurism. Simultaneously, bands like Grizzly Bear are taking their digital recordings and running them back through vintage equipment to scratch and scar them. It's amazing to see the sensibility that led archivists to make field recordings in the early 20th century colliding both with the ability of musicians to record and sample almost anything with inexpensive equipment and a modern appreciation for the rich, vintage quality of those lo-fi recordings. The Beta Band were one of the first to mine that vein, and The Three EPs still stands as a worthy touchstone for judging what's come after it. RECOMMENDED LISTENING: King Biscuit Time :: No Style :: Astralwerks :: 2000 The Beta Band :: Hot Shots II :: Astralwerks :: 2001 Animal Collective :: Feels :: Fat Cat :: 2005 Grizzly Bear :: Yellow House :: Warp :: 2006 Panda Bear :: Person Pitch :: Paw Tracks :: 2007 |
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| Last Updated: Wednesday, September 12, 2007 at 10:24 AM |
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