Heroes to Zeros (The Beta Band, 2004)

It's hard to believe the Beta Band's last album is now ten years old. Not quite old enough to drive, smoke, drink, or gamble, but old enough to know right from wrong. This was the band's only self-produced album and strikes a good balance between the freewheeling first album and the restrained second album. I think the band touched a live wire when they did their first album, which is quite strange, even for the Beta Band, and the never really felt like going back there again. The must have been emboldened by the early EP, The Patty Patty Sound, which sported an electronica parody and a 16 minute sound collage. But in the end, sampling The Black Hole soundtrack and mocking "Total Eclipse of the Heart" just didn't suit them right. They reacted with the second album, with sounds more synthetic and sports very tight running times for every track. Neither album was able to lift them past the prestige of The Three EP's, a collection of their early work.

Heroes to Zeros preserves the restrained running times (nothing here is beyond five minutes), but the band got more clever with the samples, resulting in a more natural sound, which made the EP's and the first album so enjoyable. At first it's a little jarring to hear a very U2-like opening in their first song, but it isn't long before the familiar Beta vocals kick in and the usual instrument switch-ups. Most of the songs here function well as stand-alone songs, unlike the first album which depended more on a complete listen-through.

Since it seemed like the band was finding its way again, it was a surprise when later in the year the breakup was announced. Since then, Steve Mason and Richard Greentree have launched their own projects, while Robin Jones and John Maclean teamed up with former-Beta Gordon "Lone Pigeon" Anderson to form the Aliens, which quickly released two very good (in a non-Beta way) albums, but have been silent since 2008.

As for me, I stuck by the Betas through most of their career, playing The Three EP's in my later college radio days and collecting the later albums as they were released. I like to point out at every opportunity that I knew about them long before their prominent name-drop in High Fidelity.