Soundbites

The Beta Band
“Heroes To Zeros”
Astralwerks

The Beta Band may have been introduced to you during that scene
in “High Fidelity” when Rob (John Cusack) predicts
he’ll sell five copies of “The Three EPs” just by
playing it in the store. The British’s group’s quirky
experimental pop has garnered widespread critical acclaim, but The
Beta Band’s members have always been their own worst critics.
Upon the release of their self-titled 1999 debut, they called it
the “worst record of the year.” No such negative
commentary has surfaced about its latest effort. Produced by the
band themselves, “Heroes To Zeros” might just be the
album The Beta Band has always wanted to make. The album retains
all of the band’s previous achievements: minimalist
production, heavy, atmospheric reverb and interlocking layers of
Stephen Mason’s harmonized vocals. The final piece of the
puzzle is the use of guitars, notably absent in the band’s
previous work. The presence of a main instrument at all is a
revelation, and the songs of “Heroes To Zeros” are
based around a more traditional songwriting style. The band has
crafted a much fuller, focused sound and wastes no time in
introducing it. The opening track, “Assessment,”
crackles with energy, assisted by a garage-rock riff in the bridge
and the sudden emergence of a horn section as it races towards
conclusion. “Liquid Bird” is similarly hard-edged. The
album alternates perfectly between louder, faster numbers and
slower, pretty songs, and still retains a high degree of
experimentation and genre-hopping. “Space” is a funky
trip-hop spectacle, filled with bips and bops and a shimmering
piano. “Simple” features handclaps and a detached
majesty reminiscent of The Moody Blues’ “Nights In
White Satin.” The centerpiece of “Heroes To
Zeros” is “Wonderful,” a gorgeous slice of 1960s
psychedelia. Replete with reverb, the song eases back and forth
between a murky verse and a triumphant chorus, as Mason sings,
“Someday you’ll realize/it’s all for you/I
do.” The minimalist approach that once characterized the
band’s work still remains, only now it serves to adorn its
songs rather than define them. The album wraps up nicely in the
concluding phrase of “Pure For,” in which Mason repeats
like a mantra: “I’m so glad you’ve found
me.” With “Heroes To Zeros,” The Beta Band may
have finally found itself.

-By David Greenwald

!!! “Louden Up Now” Touch and
Go

When a band is so exciting that its name consists of not one,
but three exclamation points, you’d better listen up.
Actually, according to !!!’s (pronounced chik-chik-chik) new
album title, you’d better “Louden Up Now.”
Unfortunately, the band fails to follow its own advice. On
!!!’s second full-length release, the disco-punk neophytes
wallow in sophomoric self-indulgence, filling the album with
excessive swearing and tired beats that’ll sooner move you to
boredom than the dance floor. Influences litter “Louden Up
Now.” The only things that separates “Dear Can”
from Modest Mouse’s “Bury Me With It” are a
couple of extra drum tracks and singer Nic Offer making sure we
know he doesn’t “give a fuck” by repeating little
else for six minutes. Michael Jackson-style instrumental sections
abound, and to their credit the band manages to ape the King of Pop
with some success, at least until the vocals come in. Offer is
missing Jackson’s charisma, Isaac Brock’s intensity and
the lyricism of someone like Dismemberment Plan’s Trevor
Morrison, and as a result he flounders between the soul-man persona
of “Shit Sheisse” and the cranky young punk of
“Dear Can.” The band’s musicianship itself is
solid, with guitars and horns fading in and out flawlessly over
tight layers of percussion. The album’s uniformly medium
pace, though, never reaches the frenzied abandon of similarly
dance-influenced groups like Hot Hot Heat, The Rapture, or the
melodic peaks of Jackson’s best work. Combined with
Offer’s vocal inadequacies, “Louden Up Now” loses
interest quickly. One of the few moments of originality is the
Latin-inflected “Hello? Is This Thing On?” The addition
of keyboards, bongo drums and a classical guitar produce enough
complementary sounds to remain consistently interesting. Perhaps
this polyphonic approach could’ve differentiated the mostly
homogenous tracks and raised “Louden Up Now” closer to
the level of Jackson’s “Thriller” or
Dismemberment Plan’s “Emergency & I.”
Instead, !!! neither loudens up nor does anything worthy of one
exclamation point, much less three.

-By David Greenwald