Track Listing
1. Beta Band Rap
2. It's Not Too Beautiful
3. Simple Boy
4. Round The Bend
5. Dance O'er The Border
6. Broken Up A Ding Dong
7. No 15
8. Smiling
9. Hard One
10. CowCow's Wrong
| Details | | Number of CDs: | 1 | | Producer: | Chris Allison, The Beta Band | | Recording Type: | Studio | | Distributor: | EMI Operations/CEVA Logistics | | Recording Mode: | Stereo |
Album Notes
Personnel includes: Martin Hoyland (vocals, guitar, piano, bells, spoons); Kingsley (vocals); Neil Richardson (trumpet).This Scottish quartet bounces from Four Freshman-style pre-rock balladry to menacing hiphop and demented Elvis-style rockabilly that has mutated into an amalgam of the Bonzo Dog Band and Roy Wood's Wizzard. And that's just on the first song! After that, singer Stephen Mason (who sounds uncannily like Pink Floyd's Roger Waters) and the Beta Band crew sound like the sort of group that would rather talk endlessly about other bands' records than make its own. This fact is borne out by the way the sweetly poppy and relatively normal "Round The Bend" devolves into Mason's enthusiastic spoken comparison of late '60s Beach Boys albums. The Beta Band's members aren't mere nutters, however, as the lovely, Soft Machine-like "It's Not Too Beautiful" and the extended piano coda of "The Hard One" prove. This album is clearly the product of four men with more a superabundance of ideas and a contagious try-anything-once attitude.
Editorial Reviews
Included in Q Magazine's 50 Best Albums of 1999.
Q (01/01/2000)
Ranked #10 in Mojo Magazine's Best of 1999
Mojo (01/01/2000)
...ultimately, on a record that grows stranger and strongerwith each listen, they sound like no one except themselves. - Rating: A-
Entertainment Weekly (07/16/1999)
...Beta Band wear their indulgence on their sleeve and in their grooves - and hats aloft to that....There's a definate sense of progress and much to enjoy...
Mojo (07/01/1999)
...the Betas defy all catagorization....The result's as chunky and sweet as a Toll House cookie, and as fully fleshed as a Gauguin nude...
Vibe (08/01/1999)
4 stars (out of 5) - ...bewitching, bewildering first album....[attempts] to play every kind of music in the world simultaneously....reawakens and reaffirms music's power to intoxicate, all played in the spirit of a children's music workshop.
Q (08/01/1999)
Included in Q Magazine's 50 Best Albums of 1999.Mojo (1/00, p.30) - Ranked #10 in Mojo Magazine's Best of 1999Q (8/99, p.102) - 4 stars (out of 5) - ...bewitching, bewildering first album....[attempts] to play every kind of music in the world simultaneously....reawakens and reaffirms music's power to intoxicate, all played in the spirit of a children's music workshop.Vibe (8/99, p.181) - ...the Betas defy all catagorization....The result's as chunky and sweet as a Toll House cookie, and as fully fleshed as a Gauguin nude...Mojo (7/99, p.98) - ...Beta Band wear their indulgence on their sleeve and in their grooves - and hats aloft to that....There's a definate sense of progress and much to enjoy...Entertainment Weekly (7/16/99, p.71) - ...ultimately, on a record that grows stranger and strongerwith each listen, they sound like no one except themselves. - Rating: A-
Q (01/01/2000)
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