The Beta Band
The Three EPS

I found this true gem at a stall, and only God knows how long I had been searching for it. This now-unobtainable piece is by the Beta Band, a band that was misaligned and inconsistent, which released three more works after this one from 1997. These were discontinuous, transversal, and difficult to define (which is why I find them magnificent).

What I'm presenting to you is a collection of their first three EPs, a sort of mini disc with four tracks, much easier to produce, distribute, and sell at concerts (the CD therefore has 12 tracks). Therefore, they present themselves showing off all their slow and mellifluous south rock verve, which, combined with perfectly imperfect vocal harmonies, give a true trademark to a band that still struggles today to find its precise place in the contemporary music scene (historically, during the press presentation of their first album, the singer called the album a "real piece of crap," something I believe was not true then, nor now).

Here we are at the initial drafts of the project and, amidst various naïveties, there is a strong sense of "playful goofing off" that gives the 12 tracks the feel of a Great Dress Rehearsal awaiting the true "debut album" (which would come three years later indeed with the aforementioned historic quip) and renders them incredibly free and spontaneous, as if we were in their rehearsal room, without too much polish or refinement. Thus, you can hear the background voices, pauses, off-theme improvisations, and arrangements that transition with nonchalance from soft rock to bossa nova, with the inclusion of hand claps, whistles, Beach Boys-like choruses, reverberations, laughter, and many things that would make the beloved Beck from Odelay rejoice. In short, an extremely varied album, although fairly "flat" in the harmonic setup and in the construction of the tracks, always strictly slow, which gives the tracks a single recognizable and very enjoyable matrix. Hence emerges the post-cylum trip (the track "Monolith", appropriately lysergic and psychedelic, that is, over 15 minutes long!) or the Lennon-esque "She's The One", or the off-kilter "Push It Out" solely a cappella, with plate claps and hand-claps (?), the west-coast songs of "It's Over", worthy of the best Neil Young meeting Morricone, the chaotic "Dr. Baker" where vocal intertwining becomes experimentation leading to exercises on the edge of progressive, but always in a playful and never pedantic way, without instrumental virtuosity but always favoring the group spirit, and so on throughout the entire work, full and brimming with "other" references and citations.

An album that I find beautiful and visionary that, despite the technical limits of the band, sounds like a long and wonderful psychedelic, noise, and post-rock journey in the best tradition, giving the voices and their strange sound mix, the title of true protagonists of the "Three E. P. S." project. A truly great discovery indeed.