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Online | Edinburgh Student Newspaper | Entertainment Ireland | FACT Magazine | Gigwise | Glide Magazine | GodIsInTheTV zine | HMV.co.uk | IC Birmingham.co.uk | ireallylovemusic.co.uk | Loaded Magazine | Magnet Magazine | Manchester Online | Maxim Online | Mojo Magazine | MusicOMH | New York Times, The | Nuts magazine | Official Playstation 2 Magazine UK | Piccadilly Records Manchester | Pitchfork | Pixelsurgeon.com | Playlouder | Rockfeedback | RockMidgets.com | Silent Uproar | Stylus Magazine | Sunday Herald | Sunday Times | Teletext Planet Sound | The Beat Surrender | The Guardian | The Observer | The Observer Music Monthly | The Onion A.V. Club | The Sunday Times | The Telegraph | The Times | tinymixtapes | tohellwith.co.uk | UK Fusion | Yahoo Launch AllMusic.com [link] Reviewer: John Bush Rating: 4.5/5 stars The Beta Band have rarely pronounced themselves happy with their own work, seemingly oblivious to the fact that it's usually quite good. (Once, the public sniping began before an album had even appeared in the stores.) From all reports, Heroes to Zeros, their first complete self-production since reaching a major label, has finally contented the group. And though they've succeeded in their attempts to make their music more direct and compact, the album is still clearly the work of the same methodically shambolic Beta Band of old — the perfect balance of straight-ahead and ahead-of-the-curve. Beginning with their first three EP's, the group's subversive performances only barely masked their inspired melodies and Stephen Mason's distinctive voice. (If he were a pianist, he'd be using the black keys often and exploring the new notes that arise when striking two keys at the same time.) Their first two full-lengths were beautiful, but stubbornly so, as though the group were keeping a wonderful secret and didn't want it to get out. Bored with the prosy material of the past, the Beta Band decided to focus on their talents at crafting pop music, and fortunately, they didn't jettison their uncommon sound in the process. "Assessment," the opener and first single, begins as a very direct, slightly beguiling U2 cast-off, but roars into the finish with a charged horn section. During a perfect middle section for the record, "Wonderful" and "Troubles" begin as warped glosses on a pair of archetypes (the love song and the world-weary song, respectively) but end as majestic, surprisingly tender performances; the group then detours into "Out-Side," a ragged pop freakout worthy of Super Furry Animals, kicked off by sampled dog barks. "Space Beatle" separates its skeletal, haunted verses from the full flower of its precise chorus by a landslide of sludgy tape excess. As producers, the quartet are still heavily influenced by two aspects of the Beach Boys: the cyclical, segmented flair of "Good Vibrations" or "Heroes and Villains" and, at other times, the detached chill-out pop of 20/20 and Friends. It's clear why the Beta Band have become their own best producers: their songs and ideas are so intricate that no single production approach could work on the same album, or even the same song. No outside producer could get the best out of them without living these songs for months beforehand. With songs that end up miles away from where they began and excellent pacing (both within songs and throughout the entire album), Heroes to Zeros is yet another triumph for the Beta Band and confirmation that they're at their most powerful and effective when working as a self-contained unit. [thanks to CruJones for posting] Amazon.co.uk [link] Reviewer: Louis Pattison Rating: n/a The sleeve to Heroes to Zeros, the third album from the Beta Band, depicts them as garishly clad cartoon superheroes, bursting from the frame to confront the forces of evil and deliver a mighty smackdown. Anyone familiar with the career of these Scots rock experimentalists, however, will be more than aware that the Betas have more than enough trouble tackling their own expansive muse, without throwing something comparatively trifling such as saving the world into the mix. That said, on Heroes to Zeros--the Beta Band's first fully self-produced effort--everything seems to be gelling nicely, despite the dizzying disparity of the parts involved. It's more guitar-heavy than previous efforts, and it's strangely exciting to hear frontman Steve Mason cutting loose on the axe here--everything from U2-style dynamics to mournful English folk fingerpicking seem well within his grasp. "Assessment" is the instant winner, Mason dolefully intoning "I think I cut my skull on the way down/ I think I lost my head when I lay down" over chiming guitar fanfares and roaring brass. But elsewhere, the band's characteristically eccentric manner is given free reign: try "Wonderful", a sprawling cosmic love song, or "Liquid Bird", a weird mélange of scintillating House of Love guitars, hip-hop rhythms and electronic kickdrums that beat like a hummingbird's wings. Amazon.com [link] Reviewer: Editorial Reviews Rating: n/a With props in John Cusack's High Fidelity for their classic '3 EPs' and a much-lauded US tour with Radiohead, The Beta Band have established themselves as one of the most innovative and adored groups from the UK. Their third official album HEROES TO ZEROS captures the focused immediacy and power of their epic live shows, while maintaining the sample-tastic digital sorcery of their previous releases. Mixed by Nigel Godrich (Radiohead, Air, Beck). Features "Assessment". BBC Collective [link] Reviewer: Matt Walton Rating: 4/5 stars A heroic third album from Scotland’s finest. Judging by the title of their third proper album, The Beta Band are still recovering from that moment when they famously declared their debut album (which followed their much lauded Three EPs) to be “shit”. Fortunately, this seems to have given the band a burning desire to prove to the world that they are actually as good as we all thought they were. Heroes To Zeroes refines that trademark Beta Band sound: soft vocals, pounding drums and the understated but slightly twisted sense of melody. Their third album is far from “shit” and much more “hero” than “zero”. BBC Manchester - Music [link] Reviewer: Chris Long Rating: 7/10 You have to feel sorry for the Beta Band. It's six years since their opening trio of releases was brought together on The Three EPs and they are still trying to live up to the touches of genius and tons of potential that streamed through it. Heroes To Zeros is their third long player proper and try as you might to judge it on its merits, the spectre of The Three EPs looms over it, dashing its hopes of being anything more than good. That's the truth of the Beta Band's predicament. The opening driven chaos of Assessment may have a hectic enjoyment but it's no She's The One. Lion Thief may have a looped hypnosis but it's hardly Dry The Rain. Despite all your best efforts to ignore the inadequacies, the lack of anything stunning weighs as heavily as on the four piece's previous two outings. That's not to say that there isn't a mountain of merit to the album. The Beta Band's good is high above the level of most bands' excellent. In the harmonica and deep bass of Easy, in the lazy laden vocal of Wonderful, in the barking dog and pushing pound of Outside, in the floating squall of Space Beatle, there's still plenty of moments when you realise why you love this lot so much. Will the Beta Band ever come through on the promise of The Three EPs? Maybe. Would it really be the end of the world if it they didn't? Maybe not. Even touches of class are better than a vast majority of the music about at the moment. Heroes To Zeros? They're being a bit over-critical in themselves. They may have dropped a little but there's still something superhuman in their tunes. BBC Rock & Alt [link] Reviewer: Chris Jones Rating: n/a Much has been made of the metaphorical significance of the Beta Band depicting themselves as android-annihilating cartoon superheroes on the front cover of Heroes To Zeros. Surely, some folk reason, this is a band brimming with confidence and an album chock-full of tight, snappy tunes? Few seem to have caught on to the flip side. On the reverse are four piles of clothes on a beach, discarded Reggie Perrin-style. This surely signifies a band that long to shed their identities; desperate to escape society's expectations and attempting to start again from scratch. Of course with a band contradictory enough to publicly diss their wonderful first album both of these options could be true. The fact remains that Heroes... marks a whole new era for the Betas. Kicking off with the spunky, horn-assisted single, "Assessment", Heroes... is a move further towards a more song-based approach. Gone are the meandering lo-fi dubs of the 3EPs and the ingenious loops and perversity of the aforementioned debut. Instead we get a tighter, more ethereal development of the funky breakbeats and (whisper it) rock dynamics of Hot Shots II. For the very first time our Scottish heroes are cranking up the guitars! Solos abound and acoustics ring pastorally. ''Out-Side'' (named ''Pot Pissin''' in the lyric sheet. Yes, I said lyric sheet) is mosh-mongous while ''Liquid Bird'' and ''Assessment'' contain riffs that could be taken from U2's first album. But the Beta Band are far too oblique and tricksy to stick to any kind of dull 4/4 format. Vocals trip over each other in counterpoint and within the mix there's always enough bleeps and burbles to remind you that this is a very 21st century hybrid. ''Space'' explores both the inner and outer variety with a krautrock clatter. Elsewhere, they demonstrate their uncanny knack for low-key beauty on ''Wonderful''. It's left to tracks like ''Space Beatle'' and ''Rhodedendron'' to represent the off-kilter grooves of their previous work, albeit with a sweeter sense of melody. Oddly the only negative point seems to be in the final mixing by uber-fixer/producer Nigel Godrich whose echoey touch (along with the strangely unemotional multi-tracked vocals) at times puts you in mind of mid-period Pink Floyd. It's not such a bad reference, but one can't help wishing he had some new tricks up his sleeve. This aside, the Betas now find themselves at a critical stage. The radical departures on Heroes... could lead them either way. Whether they conquer the universe or disappear into the ocean of sound, it's still an intriguing journey... Billboard Magazine [link] Reviewer: SA Rating: n/a Remember when everyone got Radiohead? The latest Beta Band album, with its adventurous yet hook-heavy Brit-pop arrangements, may jog fans' memories. Frequent Radiohead collaborator Nigel Godrich lends a hand on the disc, which veers from haunting ballads ("Troubles") to explosive rockers ("Liquid Bird"). Another highlight is the clever lyrics of "Space": "A friend is a fool more or less/You love him but you lost a tooth." The opening track, "Assessment," may very well break the critically adored, Scotland-based Beta Band into the mainstream. Its opening keyboard strokes, vigorous and arresting, recall Coldplay's hit "Clocks." Immediately alluring without sacrificing eclecticism, "From Heroes to Zeroes" is a pleaser.—SA BlazinVibes.com [link] Reviewer: Beth Milne Rating: 9/10 After a rocky start with a self titled debut album, and a second album Hot Shots II which wasn’t much better, it looks like the grumpiest foursome in rock have finally reached success. All the band’s ideas have finally come together in a sort of bongo, church organ, guitar driven kind of a way, along with a lot of computer technology which hails the way for much more composed songs which stand out and are miles apart from anything they have ever produced previously. There are two sides to this album; that are both the total opposite of each other. The spiritual, peaceful part expressed by Steve Mason’s voice with songs such as Wonderful and Troubles, which almost whisper the meaningful words, invoking feelings that are instantly recognisable in everybody. The more emotional charged side, the thrashing instrumental compositions of the track, Rhododendron and the beat driven, Painted Bird. It’s not surprising that by just listening to the music, that there is an element of peace vs. war, with this self-produced album, inspired by global issues of terrorism, war and governmental mediocrity; which creates a much more aggressive appeal about the band than their earlier stuff. Frontman Mason sums up the band achievements in just a few sentences, “Heroes To Zeros represents a true marriage of samples, programmed beats and a live band. This is something we've been working towards since the beginning. We've carried on trying to hone our sound down to a pop song and are learning to make it tighter and more exciting". It has taken 18 months of hard graft, to create this polished masterpiece and seven years and numerous single and EP releases for this Anglo-Scottish band to find their true form and reach the top. Chartattack [link] Reviewer: Dan "The Mouth" Lovranski Rating: n/a Despite the obvious comparisons that The Beta Band get to groups like Spiritualized, Tortoise and even Radiohead (since they toured with them in 2001), they also have a connection to British eccentrics of the ‘60s, especially bands like Family or even Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd. The Beta Band create some great pop songs — complete with lots of juicy hooks and singalong bits — and then wrap the whole thing up in some pretty way-out instrumentation, while still creating a very inviting sound filled with both wonderful lushness and severe digital intensity. It's that constant clash between the beautiful and the harsh that creates some great contrast in songs like "Out-Side" and "Assessment." A perfect pop record for the upcoming dog days of summer. Cokemachineglow.com [link] Reviewer: David M. Goldstein Rating: 87% Like just about everyone I know, I’m in the habit of listening to music before I fall asleep. Selections vary from night to night, but generally tend to be of a relaxing nature, designed to signal a closure of some sort. The last song on the recent Shins album has cropped up very often as of late, as have a handful of tracks on R.E.M.’s underrated Reveal. Never is the selection of music more important however then when I’m, for lack of a better descriptor, raging drunk. You know the drill; stumbling in at 4 AM on what’s hopefully a Saturday or Sunday, having just imbibed enough liquor in the past six hours to give Hemingway or Bukowski pause. The room is spinning; I’m talking to myself, wondering whether or not I’m truly happier now that I’m single, etc. I need to hear something that’s going to force me to fall asleep while making me feel less sorry for myself than I do at that moment in time. That something is “Needles in My Eyes” by the Beta Band. Needles in my eyes won’t cripple me tonight, alright. Twisted out my mind please pull me through the night, alright. I doubt that Steve Mason and co. purposely designed “Needles in My Eyes” to be a mantra for drunk folk in the wee hours of the morning, but that’s what I’ve adopted it as. “Needles in My Eyes” is my official ‘drunk at 4 AM’ song, and just about the only thing I’ll listen to in said situation. If I feel that an evening of heavy drinking is at hand, I’ll even have it cued up and waiting on pause before I leave the house. “Needles in My Eyes” sounds like a drunken fool feels; groggy, depressed, and yet somehow cautiously optimistic and hopeful. A listen allows me to convince myself that I won’t be a waste of life come morning; a new love is around the corner, and the next Beta Band record won’t take three years to make. It’s relatively conventional structure keeps it from being the most original track The 3 EP’s compilation, but it’s probably my favorite nevertheless. Suffice it to say however, there’s really very little I don’t like about The 3 EP’s. With that record, The Beta Band gave the listener psychedelic folk-rock, infectious beats, Steve Mason’s exceedingly warm tenor, and even beat boxing; all condensed into non-linear pop songs. Somehow touching upon practically every reason that I listen to music in the first place, The 3 EP’s is easily one of my favorite records of the past ten years, and turned me into a devoted follower of this band. They’ve yet to make a bad disc; The Beta Band’s self-titled 1999 disc never comes close to being as awful as they want you to believe (their highly publicized trashing of it is has passed into legend), and 2001’s Hot Shots II is also excellent, if perhaps a little too laid back. So it’s no exaggeration to say that I’ve been feverishly crossing out the days on my calendar leading up to the release of Heroes to Zeros, and was in the process of plotting some sort of elaborate revenge scheme should it suck. It’s annoying enough that an act as talented as The Beta Band makes their fan base wait three years between records, but this also has the side effect of making expectations that much higher, almost to the point where anything less than a fantastic album will be seen as a major disappointment. And when the news hit that the band had fired producer Tom Rothrock in favor of self-production, and enlisted Radiohead guru Nigel Godrich for the final mix, tongues were wagging. You can’t blame the kids for getting a little excited. Heroes to Zeros isn’t the awe-inspiring, psychedelic masterpiece that many were hoping for, and that this band is still capable of. And though I seldom harp on an album’s length, 43 minutes is awfully stingy considering the three year wait for new material. Funny then that Heroes to Zeros is still the best Beta Band album since The 3 EP’s. It’s far livelier than Hot Shots II and easily their most varied effort to date; touching on a variety of styles while making the most of unsurprisingly stellar production and Steve Mason’s multi-tracked tenor. I wouldn’t fault diehards from bitching about the album’s short length, and the fact that it isn’t so much a step forward as a consolidation of strengths, but the fact remains that tracks such as “Wonderful,” “Liquid Bird” and “Space Beatle” rank with the finest songs they’ve ever written. One of the things I’ve always appreciated about The Beta Band is their unwillingness to sound anything less than hi-fi. Seven years removed from the relatively stripped down The 3 EP’s, they remain the pre-eminent headphone band of the day, and the production on Heroes to Zeros will do precious little to change this. Their songwriting abilities are generally above par, but to love The Beta Band is to love sound. Take for example “Wonderful”, the album’s centerpiece and arguably finest hour. At its heart, it’s a slow burning two chord acoustic love song featuring the mantra “she’s so wonderful” muttered ad infinitum. But this being the Beta Band, the verse portion contains a steady bass pulse, hand claps, the sound of drum sticks hitting snare drum metal, a “Paint it Black” sounding guitar lead, and something akin to the sound you hear when Mario eats a mushroom to become Super Mario. And this also being the Beta Band, the production values assure that your ears will be able to separate each and every one of these sounds. Say nothing of the chorus, in which crashing piano gives way to an unbelievably reverberated Steve Mason intoning “In time, I realize/ It’s all for you, I do.” The sound is literally poured into your ears; and the result is the finest Beta Band love song since “To You Alone” (only available as a UK single, but incredibly Soulseek worthy). But anybody familiar with earlier Beta Band songs such as “Gone,” and “Push it Out” already knows that lush and slow isn’t exactly a stretch for these guys. “Wonderful” and the similarly sounding “Lion Thief” and “Space Beatle” are merely quality examples of the band playing to strengths that we already knew they had. It’s interesting then to hear The Beta Band attempt to leave their comfort zone on “Out-Side” and “Liquid Bird” by rocking out. The former is the weaker of the two, rocking a little more conventionally than this band should ever have to, but it does earn originality points for using a dog bark as a rhythmic device. “Liquid Bird” however, is unquestionably cool; layering pump organ over fuzzy sheets of “Sister Ray”-style distortion and uncharacteristically buried vocals. And this being The Beta Band (sensing a pattern?), there’s a Timbaland sounding stutter-step tossed in for good measure. There are plenty of moments like the latter on Heroes to Zeros; the sustained piano notes on “Lion Thief” and xylophone on “Troubles” among my favorites. The attention to detail has the effect of constantly revealing new sounds upon repeated listens, but the album never feels overproduced. It took them a little longer to do it than most would have liked, but The Beta Band has made another excellent record with Heroes to Zeros. And I’m guessing the faithful will agree, so long as they can forgive the short length and fact that this is likely all the music we’re going to see from these guys for at least another three years. The inherently spacey and relaxing nature of this band has led to many of the tracks from Heroes to Zeros cementing themselves into my pre-sleep listening routine, and they’ll likely stay there for quite some time. Genre-hopping space rock with incredible production values and vocals capable of melting butter; thy name is Beta Band. deo2 [link] Reviewer: SashaS Rating: 8/10 The Beta Band - brill-return of the original outsiders The Beta Band have never taken an easy route and that is the way they like it. It is so refreshing to hear ad see a band that is not mad on gaining fame [or notoriety] by any price… to their soul. A lot of talent less musos get hooked on getting to the top, even if only for a time’s trifle. Let assume that the mainstream music is an entrée and some avant-tranches are its main course, then the Beta Band are that indulgence that comes with a lot of choc and some potent cherry. The best thing is that they ain’t giving up on their chosen path of hovering on the outskirts of money-land. And they’ve always been serious about it. In 1999 they were abusing their eponymous debut album before its release. A shame really, since their wildly eclectic sound proved to be the unrecognised link between The Beach Boys, Portishead, Captain Beefheart and skiffle. The second disc was a tad too eclectic although, ever since ‘Dry The Rain’ in 1997, many bands have tried to emulate the Betas’ shuffling space beats. ‘Heroes to Zeros’ demonstrates why few, if any - candidly, have ever succeeded. Having taken 18 months to craft their third album, the cantankerous Edinburgh-based quartet have grown-up and honed themselves into serious contenders. At its best - the beautiful ‘Wonderrful’ and ‘Out-Side’, which begings with tribal drums and barking dogs - this album has the air of a major work. Steve Mason sings like an impious choirboy, especially on the desperately lonely ‘Troubles‘ while a luxuriant mix by Radiohead producer Nigel Goodrich brings a dozen drawplate tracks into a coherent whole. While nobody could ever accuse the band of being commercial, this disc is a surprisingly direct ride. The combative single ‘Assessment’ is typical of an album which hones their outstanding way with beats to its purest form yet whilst ‘Simple’ display intricate textures that include indecently luscious strings. Forget the [cool] grumpy public image - anybody who crafts songs as a-kinky as ‘Space Beatle’ is on the side of the divine deviants. Moving, poignant and, when the birdsong kicks in on ‘Assessment’, funny, The Beta Band sound like almost everyone. Nobody, though, sounds quite like them. From ‘Heroes To Zeros’? Perhaps in the public eyes but musically - they ain’t fooling nobody. Designer Magazine [link] Reviewer: Nicholas Paul Godkin Rating: n/a Surly Scots or misunderstood musical magpies? Or both? The Beta Band have had a love / hate relationship with the media since day one. Although their Three EP's compilation was well received, the follow up self titled debut was a mitigating disaster derided by the Beta Band themselves (although on reflection it's not really that bad). This was followed up by the more cohesive Hots Shots 2. The bands reluctance for self promotion has harmed them in the long run as they've got so much to offer. At the moment the band are just above cult status, but still on the cusp of impending success. "Heroes To Zeros", the bands third album took eighteen months to record with help from Nigel Godrich on the mixing desk. The intention was to create a melting pop of a live sound matched to a technological template. As it is "Heroes To Zeros" is a natural progression from "Hot Shots 2" which sees the Beta band broaden their horizons to a satisfying degree. The primitive percussion and electronic bleeps and tweaks of "Space" add to an immediate live feel which is in keeping with the bands new direction. Steve Mason's vocal is cool and confident and the instrumentation mixes manic guitar breaks, pop harmonies worth of the Beach Boys and an unusual but strangely endearing middle eight which enables the song to have a trippy anthemic edge while allowing the band to let rip in the studio. Structurally "Wonderful" recalls the fuzzy logic of Super Furry Animals. With a mellow 60s whimsy this also has a touch of The Stone Roses with charming, romantic lyrics. Undemanding and a tad repetitive this is easy to like, but not very memorable. "Out-Side" mixes seagulls, barking dogs, loud drums and heavy guitars in an ambitious undertaking which thankfully works in a psychedelic way. The sentiments ring true as he trills "I love your way". "Pure For" has Mason's whispering vocal proclaiming "I'm so glad you've found me". Maybe the truculent frontman has fallen in love. Minimal yet majestic, laying down the groove laden beats on a grand finale to a terrific album. If you've never taken a shine to The Beta Band give them a chance as "Heroes To Zeros" could be their breakthrough album. Drowned In Sound [link] Reviewer: Michaela Annot Rating: 2.5/5 Despite conformity and strait-jacketing not being musical virtues that we either applaud or encourage, it does occasionally help to have a little direction and structure. Unsurprising for a band as freely-spirited as The Beta Band, these qualities are sometimes lacking. Evidently a lot of time and effort has gone into the making of the Scottish avant-indieists' new album, but the lengthy gestation period and a sense of over-incubation has led to something of a malformed mutant. Where it should have been hatched well before now, it's come out late, having grown odd, cumbersome extra limbs. Opener 'Assessment' however, is a doozy; the insistent buzzing guitars and deep rolling bass give way to a three part horn-led wig-out and sounds like the best song that Ian Brown never had. Unfortunately, the rest of the first half of 'Heroes To Zeroes' is largely forgettable. 'Lion Thief' starts with simple, spacious guitars and threatens a metamorphosis into something else, but it simply meanders to a stop, while 'Easy' fritters away without ever making a mark. Where these songs should be involving and complex like the Beta's best songs, we instead get aimless instrumentations and pointless noise effects. Fortunately though, there is 'Wonderful', which is the sort of stoned psychedelic ballad that they excel at, and it is indeed rather wonderful. Sounding not unlike Spiritualized, it gratifyingly swells in all the right places. However, there's not enough of this, just the hint of it. 'Space' is a combination of squelching bass and dreamy vocals, but like, 'Lion Thief', comes to nothing. 'Troubles' attempts to repeat the trick of 'Wonderful', but seems like an overproduced snip of an idea. There are other excellent moments, but not enough of them. 'Liquid Bird' is a fast-paced filterdisco effort, hectic and cool, whilst closer 'Pure For' is understated and gossamer. Ultimately though, the third LP proper by the band is frustrating; utterly annoying in fact. For we know that the Beta Band have one jaw-dropping album in them. 'Hot Shots' was nearly it, but certainly this is not. On balance it's acceptable,But for the Betas, that's simply not acceptable. E! Online [link] Reviewer: n/a Rating: B+ For those few who find Radiohead just a tad too conventional, there is always the space-suit-wearing, satellite-noise-sampling Beta Band. Their music reliably bumps up your CD collection's weird factor by 1,000. So, while the trippy Scottish foursome's third disc may make a few nods to reality when it incorporates boring things like, you know, choruses and verses, songs like "Assessment" and "Liquid Bird"--all electronic gurgles and off-the-wall vocals--still wave the freak flag. We suggest you salute it. Edinburgh Student Newspaper [link] Reviewer: Malcolm Jack Rating: 4 stars NOT ONES for predictability, the Beta Band are back with an album which, wait for it, they’re actually quite pleased with. “This is something we’ve been working towards since the beginning,” says singer Steve Mason. One listen and it’s pretty clear why it took them so long. Opener ‘Assessment’ is about as formulaic as Heroes to Zeroes gets. Even then it only remains so for the first three minutes before blaring brass de-rails the song and album from any sense of the conventional. Their genre-bending eclectic ramble takes us from the limits of Stevie Wonder-esque clave funk in ‘Easy’ to bizarre dog, seagull and train samples in ‘Out-side’, closing with the gently hypnotic ‘Pure-For’. Get beyond the ridiculously self-deprecating title, and you can see that the lessons of the last two releases have been learned - a truly patient labour of love has finally been conceived. Genuinely innovative albums like this don’t come together overnight. Their very best might have been a long time coming, but it was worth the wait. Entertainment Ireland [link] Reviewer: Andrew Lynch Rating: 4 stars The Beta Band could be forgiven for feeling just a little frustrated. Despite being lauded by everyone from Radiohead to John Cusack in High Fidelity, the Scottish quartet have spent the best part of a decade waiting to have a hit of their own (calling their first album 'a crock of s**t' probably didn't help). Well, if Heroes To Zeroes doesn't do the trick, nothing will - this time round, the band have tidied up their sound, turned up the volume and produced what's undeniably their most accessible offering to date. But while they may have moved a little closer to the mainstream, the Beta Band remain as dazzlingly inventive as ever. Garage rock, space-age electronica and psychedelic skiffle have all been thrown into the mix here, together with such characteristically zany touches as cosmic rayguns and barking dogs. It all adds up to a formidable album, but has it come in time to rescue the Beta Band's career? Let's hope so. FACT Magazine [link] Reviewer: Maximillian Ray Rating: n/a FACT: YOU NEED THIS ALBUM If you've never seen The Beta Band perform live, you might be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss has been about. Hyped by the NME, praised by Radiohead, name-checked in the Hollywood version of the Nick Hornby best-seller, compared to (at one stage or another) The Stone Roses, The Beach Boys, The Beatles, Primal Scream and DJ Shadow, and yet most people would be pushed to hum even one of their tunes. See them live, however, and it's virtually impossible not to be at least moved, if not entirely converted to the cause. Homemade films and wacky costume wearing contribute to rather than dominate their elaborate performances - where band members change roles, mix breakbeats with folk melodies, pure pop harmonies with wild sonic experimentation (the sound of dogs barking, seagulls squawking, etc.), and grooves so funky Sly Stone himself would approve. Well, the good news is that 'Heroes...', their third album, is an attempt to marry this "intangible live element" with studio sorcery. The better news, is that it works, brilliantly. Self-produced (with a final mix from Nigel Godrich), 'Heroes...' is the Beta's at their most polished, dramatic, and convincing. Whether they're pairing lyrics despairing Blair's mediocrity/hypocrisy with unrelenting rock 'n' roll ('Assessment'), or burning the candle for gorgeous, romantic pop ('Space Beatle', 'Pure For') or achieving the somewhat remarkable feat of making psychedelic funk ('Easy') 'jams' sound imminently listenable, 'Heroes...' remains a record so consistently rich in ideas that you'd be cheap not to buy it. Gigwise [link] Reviewer: Steve McQueen Rating: 3.5/5 stars In the midst of modern day egomania and stylish acts without substance The Beta band defy every trend and fashion that is current at this point in 2004, and stay true to the BB ethos, which is of course, to do their own thing. Obviously in past occasions, the Beta band have been pigeon holed by music critics in an attempt to understand their mish mash of music styles. With their third album to date the wacky genre hoppers are back with samples of dogs barking, bouncy electronica, synth bass, bongos and seemingly any other instrument they could get their hands on at the time. But despite this, the album is strangely guitar based – which worryingly brings it to the forefront of the mainstream with acoustic and chirpy beats in ‘Easy’ and shady electric rock in songs like ‘Liquid Bird’. It's easy to see that The Beta band have a had time to perfect every last buggering note on this album…especially with being just under two years in the making, you get a selection of beautifully sculpted songs. This album is far more conventional than the last one, and even if you hate the Beta band, you can appreciate their weird genius with real listenable tracks. Maybe the future home of the mainstream isn’t such a bad thing after all. Glide Magazine [link] Reviewer: Shane Handler Rating: n/a Where The Beta Band’s last album,2001’s Hot Shots II, focused on minimalism with creeping, descending chords, the Scottish sample friendly quartet set out for a deeper challenge this time around. Blending their dynamic live element and blended it with rugged studio know how, The Beta Band hoped to acheive stellar hi-fi. Heroes To Zeros, their self produced third album, might just rid them of their low-key beatnik association, with this aggressive rock effort. The twelve track effort opens with “Assessment,” an echo ringing guitar anthem that, when blended with Stephen Mason’s dreamy vocals, is 80’s new-wave gone sonic, amidst the song’s lyrical distaste for Tony Blair. The band’s break-beat tendencies roar in “Space,” which unlike its stoner title, packs immediate focus with a raw, live dynamic. The psychedelic funk of “Easy,” with its jittery clavinet riff and dance groove, signals a fresh turn for the band, allowing for a certain future remix hit. In tunes like “Wonderful” and “Troubles,” the band proves they can still create their signature down tempo folk over hypnotic orchestrated beats. “Out-Side” mixes tribal beats with a plethora of random effects leading into the trippy organ-led number “Space Beatle, ” proving that there are still no rules for a Beta Band recording. With short films planned for each of these 12 tracks planned, The Beta Band remains full of clever ideas to further capture their live element to the transferable media. Heroes To Zeros is a culmination of the band’s no formula approach, hitting mission accomplished. GodsInTheTVZine [link] Reviewer: Mike Mantin Rating: 4 stars The best bands are often the most self-deprecating. Take the Beta Band: this is the lot that condemned their first record to Debut Indie Album Hell by themselves, calling it "shit". It is this rigorous perfectionism that has seen them constantly strive for the perfect formula instead of slightly tweaking a tried-and-tested one as the new albums roll out. We've had highly-praised early compilation The 3 EPs, that debut, 2001's so-so Hot Shots II, and now this. This could be the point where That Beta Band bring their long-established Mind Of Their Own into the public eye. First single Assessment delves slightly into acts from the current rock scene- which they have hitherto almost completely avoided- to add a satisfying air of coherence into their brilliant but messy style. Musical elastic to hold the whole shebang together is altogether more common. Could the Betas have written a song as spine-tinglingly gorgeous as Lion Thief with a gameplan that involves banging pots and 15-minute drum solos? No, probably not. Heroes To Zeroes is an ingeniously balanced album: while never veering into Top 20 dishwater-rock territory, the tunes are now designed to suit both their hardcore fanbase and wide-eyed kids enjoying rock climate. It's multi-layered prog-rock now wrapped in an accessible guitar sheen (partly thanks to Nigel Godrich's say in the proceedings). Steve Mason's echoey vocals now recall Elbow crooner Guy Garvey, and of course the lyrics are strange (This is the Beta Band, after all). In fact, the flaws that came with a band as adventurous as them are almost entirely absent. The Beta Band have just assured their position in the big league, and part of the fun is not having a clue what the fuck they're going to do next. [thanks to Bloodflowerbill for posting] HMV.co.uk [link] Reviewer: n/a Rating: n/a The magpies of the British indie scene, The Beta Band, return with their third, self produced album: the wonderful ‘Heroes To Zeros’. The follow-up to their highly regarded ‘Hot Shots II’ is everything fans have been waiting for since they first exploded on the music scene with their magnificent ‘Three EPs’. Eclectic, awe-inspiring and consistently inventive, ‘Heroes To Zeros’ is the sound of a band finally realising their potential. First single and album opener ‘Assessment’ is possibly the best song they’ve released yet. A loud, proud psychedelic rock – it kicks the album off to stratospheric effect. ‘Space’ quickly follows in a wash of choral harmonies, plonky piano and the sound of discos in heaven. Elsewhere ‘Lion Thief’ is delicate loveliness interspersed with dirty funk, ‘Easy’ is Sly And The Family Stone as played by the Stone Roses, ‘Out-Side’ is hard rocking tribal brilliance and closer ‘Pure For’ is otherworldly inventiveness. In between they add beautiful instrumentals, late beach boys weirdness and space-age mantras. ‘Heroes To Zeros’ is The Beta Band producing the album they’ve always promised, mixing up every genre imaginable on a record that is loud, danceable and highly entertaining. They can now rightfully take their place alongside Radiohead as one of the few groundbreakers left in modern music. IC Birmingham.co.uk [link] Reviewer: Helen Cotterill Rating: n/a The Beta Band are one of those groups which you hear good things about, but just never get round to listening to... Formed in 1997, The Beta Band emerged as a pop group sounding unlike any other. Their sound veers from post-grunge balladry to funk and ambient breakbeat to Madchester acid-house. When Heroes to Zeros arrived on my desk I was quite curious. They're one of those bands which you always know you should at least one album of but when it comes to the crunch of parting with your money you have second thoughts about risking it. However, after litening to this, their first fully self-produced effort, I wished I had added them to my CD rack earlier. Heroes to Zeros is an amalgam of samples, programmed beats and extensive guitar work. The opener and single, Assessment, sets the tone for the album: melodic guitars, hypnotic vocals and repetitive phrasing. Though a slow starter, the funky Lion Thief will have you singing when you least expect it. The beautifullly sublime Troubles contrasts well with the 1960s-inspired romp which is Out-Side. Ardent listeners of Spaceman 3 and fans of early Spiritualised will feel at home with the tracks on this, The Beta Band's third album. If you're into The Eels, Beck, Radiohead, Air, Everything But The Girl and everything else in-between, then you should seriously give this album a try. The Beta Band - Heroes to Zeroes is released on Monday 26 April The Beta Band play Wolverhampton Civic Hall on 8 May ireallylovemusic.co.uk [link] Reviewer: n/a Rating: n/a long awaited third album this time self produced with a some touchups by nigel godrich. tis about bloody time. this album is by far the best thing i have heard in 2004 from a major label band. the lads have refined their sound to a well honed tight focussed set of catchy/infectious songs (12 songs - 41 minutes !) with each song having various elements of the bands well established musical madness and gorgeous hooks. there are more straightforward pop songs on offer than in previous times, even incorporating the shocking u2 like guitars and full blown horn section on recent single 'assessment', but, fear not, this is not a full on rock-n-soul album. this is the beta band after all, and nothing is ever straightforward with this lot. the sonic landscape is still the same 'everything but the kitchen sink' type, there are the de facto to-die-for vocals by steve mason, looped harmonies, the ever so ramshackle beats, bohemian ambience, honky tonk pianos, plucked acoustic guitars harmonicas et cetera, et cetera. all of which end up taking the listener to far away worlds, where our superheroes battle with the robots of musical boredom with the mystical mop of sonic mayhem -see sleeve for details! needless to say the guys have not gone on record yet saying that they hate this album as per their 1st lp .. i guess that means something. the overall sound is of real instruments, but there has been a lot of modern studio trickery applied throughout, subtle computerised beats are processed with love and attention and weird sounds fly about. despite this off the wall approach the big difference is the sheer quality of the songs - no excess has been allowed (some may say that's its one loss - but i disagree) and there is genuinely not one dud track. this is probably the best weird alt.pop album in the world - ever. for the masses. enjoy it. wonderful in every aspect. Loaded Magazine [link] Reviewer: DB Rating: 72% Music buffs have often touted these Scots lads as the new Beach Boys, thanks to their trippy harmonies. They've got loads of famous fans, too, including Radiohead, who claimed they were going through a 'Beta Band phase' when they recorded Kid A and Amnesiac. There's plenty of experimental guff, but the melodies ensure these boys are heroes, not zeroes [thanks to Neil Torrens for sending a scan] Magnet Magazine [link] Reviewer: Corey duBrowa Rating: n/a Who knew that all this time the Beta Band actually wanted to rock? Or, god forbid, get funky? Well, unless someone out there had a clue, Heroes To Zeros—the band’s third full-length and first release in more than two years—falls out of the sky as unexpectedly as snowflakes in the Sahara. Perhaps the best way to describe its sheer sonic vastness is to suspend disbelief and reimagine the Moody Blues’ orchestral opus Days Of Future Passed as a U2 tribute album. Or P-Funk reincarnated as shoegazers. Maybe “Good Vibrations” all sorted for E’s and wizz? The point is that this LP’s recombinant way with a genre defies any rational attempt to describe it. Heroes To Zeros is psychedelic in the very best sense of the word, with lyrics that reflect the angst-ridden state of modern living (“Assessment” is essentially an update of “I Will Follow,” without any of the spiritual certainty) and the blurry reality of the waking dream (much of the rest of the album) accompanied by the most dizzying array of sonic condiments this side of Super Furry Animals. Heroes To Zeros might accurately capture the state of our modern icons—pop singers who strip during the Super Bowl, politicians who lie and then expect re-election as a birthright—but it doesn’t come near describing the greatness waiting to be revealed with each successive spin. Manchester Online [link] Reviewer: Andy Woods Rating: 4/5 stars DON'T believe the reports that the Beta Band have radically changed their style. This, their third album proper, finds the four amigos returning with a similiar strategy to previous excursions, only with a more guitar-orientated bent to their sound. The trademark mantra-like vocals and mystical percussion are still in evidence, but this time they are entwined with a rich palate of guitars, horns and keyboards, creating a more instant appeal. Opening track and new single Assessment epitomises this, rocking out to a climax worthy of the Todd Rundgren-produced Psychedelic Furs at their prime. Easy, which rides along on a Superstition-flavoured bassline, shows they can still get funky when they want to, while the aptly titled Wonderful is simply a dreamy five minutes of blissful pop. They leave the best to almost last, though, in Liquid Bird - the nearest they¹ll get to rocking out - before they bring you gently back down to earth on the acoustic Simple with its repeated vocal chant of 'can you hear me?' and lush strings. This new direction of superior, structured songwriting, rather than the ramshackle jam or wig-out Beta Band feel of old, points to a group of musicians who have mastered their craft and come of age. And yes, we can definitely hear you. Maxim Online [link] Reviewer: David Peisner Rating: 3.5/5 stars Remember that kid in college who claimed to be able to manufacture hallucinogens out of common household cleaners? The Beta Band are sort of his musical equivalent. On the Scottish quartet’s third album they conjure trippy, psychedelic soundscapes out of rather organic materials. Nothing fancy going on here, just guitars, piano, drums, and the occasional brass or string accompaniment, but it’s all put together with just enough what-the-fuckness to make it both listenable and a little otherworldly. “Assessment” opens with a piercing guitar line that the Edge might’ve proudly called his own in the late ’80s, then opens into expansive, full-bodied soul music. An acoustic guitar dances over somber piano chords and a shuffling beat on the hazy wonder “The Lion Thief,” while a funky, blaxploitation bass line propels “Easy” through lyrics like “I’m dysmorphic in doses/Imagine trying to shit out 12 red roses.” The refrain is typical of the Betas’ quirky humor, which—much like the album as a whole—is always amusing even as its meaning remains elusive. Mojo Magazine [link] Reviewer: Matt Allen Rating: 4/5 stars Startling smash and grab raid on rock history It seemed apt that Nick Hornby should choose The Beta Band as a reference point for High Fidelity's screen adaptation. Like Hornby, the Anglo-Scottish quartet are skilled cultural magpies, and on this third full album the same nimble-fingered tendencies that informed their self-titled debut and 2001's Hot Shots II are still apparent. They lift The Edge's spiky guitar riffing on Assessment and Jean-Miche Jarre's synth during Space Beatle's ambient belch. On Easy, meanwhile, they even mimic the infectious funk licks of Stevie Wonder's Superstition. But to dismiss Heroes To Zeroes as a mere exercise in rock homage underestimates The Beta Band's charm. And so a barrage of scattershot drum breaks, electronic squelches and Stephen Mason's dreamy vocals makes for yet another woozy pop assault. MusicOMH [link] Reviewer: Linda Serck Rating: n/a "The trouble with doing your own thing is you end up on your own" thankfully hasn’t been the case for The Beta Band, who sing this lyric in Simple off their latest album Heroes To Zeros. Doing their own thing in fact defines the band against all the same-sounding fame-seeking acts around today. And far from ending up on their own, they have amassed a merry band of followers from around the world. Even John Cusack played Dry The Rain off their debut album The Three EPs in the film adaptation of High Fidelity. The Beta Band have frustrated a lot of journalists who get a blank stare when asking what the band’s "influences" are. Said journos just don’t understand that The Beta Band are nestled snugly in their own pigeonhole; so there’s no need for namby-pamby cross-referencing or crows of, "Yah, that song evokes the angry roar of The Stooges with a dappling of Morrissey," like some Jilly Goulden of music critics. Even with their latest album, the genre-warpers and surrealists of sound are at it again - barking dog samples and boingy electronica, orchestras and electro bass, bongos and xylophones, all with the ever-plaintive singing of Steve Mason creamed on top. However, it is true that Heroes To Zeros is alarmingly guitar-driven, making it more mainstream than their usual experimentalist tendencies. There are clangy staccato strums in Assessment, upbeat acoustic rhythms in Easy, and dark electric in Liquid Bird. But even if the guitar takes centre stage, it does so behind a whole menagerie of sounds and samples. The album has 18 months of Beta Band brain behind it - the foursome have happily had time to tinker with every note; a far cry from their rushed second album, The Beta Band, which they themselves proclaimed was rubbish. .In contrast, each song’s soundscape in Heroes To Zeros is beautifully crafted. My favourite is Wonderful - the delicate dissonance in the repetitive line "she’s so wonderful" makes way for an adulatory chorus with reverbed voice and golden guitars and pianos. Out-Side has tumbling aggressive drums with a two-beat rhythmic dog bark, but come the chorus the beats abruptly halt and are replaced by the rising angelic line, "I love your way." The tubular Space Beatle also has a euphoric rise in the chorus with the line "I love you to pieces" after a liquid organ carries the verses. With this latest offering, the creative quartet have made their music more accessible to the general crowd while maintaining their distinct sound. In my opinion, the Beta Band are definitely a Better Band for it. New York Times [link] Reviewer: Jon Pareles Rating: n/a CRITIC'S CHOICE/NEW CD'S Trips to Headphone Wonderland It's a lovely perceptual paradox that music, invisible and intangible, cues images of three-dimensional space. Here are two albums that conjure vast imaginary soundscapes, full of echoey recesses and phantom grandeur. [review of The Secret Machines - 'Now Here Is Nowhere'] The Beta Band arrived in the late 1990's with a flourish of eclecticism, making EP's and albums that wandered among folk-rock, dance music, reggae, jokes and experiments. On the group's third full-length album, "Heroes to Zeros" (Astralwerks/EMI), these four Scottish musicians have settled into a cozy zone of latter-day psychedelia, singing in smoky, sleepy voices as they play acoustic guitars and pick up whatever else seems to be lying around the studio, from little bells and hand drums to distortion boxes and samples of barking dogs. . "Heroes to Zeros" is clearly the product of long hours of multitracking, with just enough song in each track to hang all the instrumental ideas on. The mood on "Heroes to Zeros" turns a little darker than it was on the previous Beta Band albums. Many songs are in minor keys, and the opening song, "Assessment," offers "the fear facts presented in the cold light of day" as guitars jab continually like a distant alarm. "Liquid Bird" seems to take note of world events: "If we don't give them weapons how you gonna get your food?" A dazed loneliness pervades many of the songs: "I tried to do my own thing, but the trouble with your own thing is you end up on your own," the group sings in "Simple." Meanwhile the arrangement starts with a string quartet and sprouts a slow funk beat, bubbling keyboards, guitars in a stereo dialogue and vocal chorales — not so simple after all. Unlike the Secret Machines, the Beta Band doesn't pay much attention to the outside world. The band's solution to "Troubles" is "If everybody laughed for just one day, you know that would make me happy." The Beta Band seems happiest sequestered in the studio, where there's always another potential overdub to hold the world at bay. Nuts Magazine [link] Reviewer: n/a Rating: 3/5 [can anyone transcribe this review?] Official Playstation 2 Magazine UK [link] Reviewer: n/a Rating: 8/10 Who? Beardy psych-rockers who dress up in spacesuits and slag their own records before they're even out. Highlights: 'The Assessment' (sic) is the score to 2001 as played by monkeys with brains the size of melons and an interplanetary-sized horned section. Lowlights: 'Wonderful' whiffs of lentils. Otherwise, all good. Verdict: A raggedly triumphant album and the Beta's best yet. 8/10. [thanks Monkey_Chops for transcribing] Piccadilly Records Manchester [link] Reviewer: n/a Rating: n/a Indie Record Of The Week Third time lucky for the Super-Scots, because this is easily their best album yet, by a mile. They've finally recaptured the other-worldly freed-up magic of their "3 EPs" and honed it into a proper (nearly!) rock album. Well it's less wacky, whistles'n'bells, and much more crafted and melodic. It also evokes ghosts of Beatles, Stones, Beach Boys and early Floyd, but it's still well left of conventional rock. Everyone in the shop loves this record (though I may have spoilt it a bit by playing it to death for a fortnight!) It's the revelling in the texture of sound and the playful experimentation that thrills. They're like kids in a musical toyshop. It's a detailed, inventive, fun-loving record that rolls all those weird, druggy, garagey, hippy, bonkers, charming late-60s sounds into one tasty, modern nugget. Got any joss-sticks, anyone? Pitchfork [link] Reviewer: Matt LeMay Rating: 6.9/10 It's been said that any truly great song can remain just as recognizable and distinctive when broken down to its most basic structure and played on a solo instrument. If this is to be taken as an accurate gauge of musical value, then the Beta Band might be the worst fucking band in history. On their debut, The Three EPs, the Scottish foursome turned the periphery of songwriting into the main attraction, applying multilayered production and serpentine song structures to chords and melodies that repeated to the point of self-nullification. The group's second, self-titled album took this approach even further, as what seemed at first like petty musical asides were developed into the record's most striking and fully realized moments. These records' effects were world-class icing on cardboard cupcakes, using the traditional foundations of strong songwriting as a placeholder before smothering them in sweetness. A steady diet of icing, however, can only last so long. The Beta Band's last record, 2001's Hot Shots II, showed the band grappling with a lack of ideas for the first time. The songs themselves were every bit as drony and repetitive as those on the first two records, but lacked the fascinating production tricks and odd instrumentation of their best work. Indeed, the un-structure that made the first two Beta Band records so captivating seemed to have evolved into a structure of its own. On their fourth album, Heroes to Zeros, that structure is further solidified, to decidedly mixed results. "Assessment", the album's first single, toys with the kind of playful dynamics that made The Three EPs such a dense listen. In true Beta Band fashion, the heart and soul of "Assessment" is little more than the interplay between two similar guitar parts, and one fantastic drum fill. A few minutes into the song, a simple bassline rises to prominence before quickly and elegantly segueing back into a chorus. It's a nice diversion, but one can't shake the feeling that The Beta Band of yore could have turned it into an epic. The more disjointed final section of "Assessment" is similarly frustrating-- several great ideas are explored, but the band moves between them with an abandon uncharacteristic to even their most slapdash work. Still, "Assessment" remains one of the best tracks on Heroes to Zeros. On "Lion Thief", frontman Stephen Mason's recurring deadpan, "The fruits are the loops are the friendships that droop," approaches self-parody, rendering painfully clear the more formulaic aspects of the band's sound. And sadly, the attempts at departure don't fare much better. "Easy", with its embarrassing Stevie Wonder keyboards, could be the low point of all of The Beta Band's catalog. The tepid "Wonderful" is particularly unfortunate for its thematic similarities to The Three EPs' awe-inspiring "She's the One", host to one of the most forceful and moving crescendos I've ever heard. The Beta Band's best moments often came when they worked in extremes-- minimal sampled beats followed by insane, multitracked chipmunk vocals and massive, reverb-soaked drum fills. Here, as with Hot Shots, the band attempts to split the difference, and in doing so, sacrifices the momentum that made their first two albums so thrilling. Thankfully, Heroes to Zeros picks up with "Out-Side", by far the album's standout. Opening with overbearing beats and an unusual barking dog sample, the song soon breaks into reverb-laden vocals and rough electric guitar. Later, screeching synthesizers penetrate the mix, signaling yet another substantial textural change. But then, the song is awkwardly followed by "Space Beatle", whose chorus of, "I love you to pieces," registers as a watered-down rehash of "Out-Side"'s subtle and charming "I love you" chorus. Indeed, Heroes to Zeros is host to an unusually large number of deja vu's. Most of these moments simply evoke Heroes to Zeros' increasing reliance upon form and formula-- but not all of them. At about three minutes through "Out-Side", I found myself checking my stereo to see if what I was hearing was still part of the same song, and it immediately brought to mind the experience of listening to The Three EPs for the first time. For just a little while, The Beta Band once again sounded like a band that could turn three notes into a symphony. Pixelsurgeon.com [link] Reviewer: Raoul Sanchez Rating: 9/10 The Beta Band's new album, From Heroes to Zeroes, kicks off in muscular, confident fashion with the hit single, Assessment (well, it got to number 31, which isn't too bad for such a perversely uncompromising group as The Beta Band). The vocals could only be Steve Mason, with his deadpan delivery, but the band continue on their musical journey they began with Hot Shots II, which saw them break away from the complete randomness of their first two quirky releases, The Three EPs and The Beta Band. The focus here is very much on songs, which have always been lurking in every Beta Band track if you care to look. From Heroes to Zeroes is the band's first attempt at producing themselves, and they do a great job, although having Radiohead's producer Nigel Godrich twiddling the knobs for the mix can only help. The result is surprising rocky and there's even a - gasp - guitar solo in there! It's like Steve Mason has been holding back all this time and just wants to rock out. The rest of the band - John Maclean, Robin Jones and Richard Greentree are in fine fettle, too, providing a bizarre sound collage to envelope Mason's tales of love and everyday life. Although eschewing the completely surreal sounds of their initial recordings in favour of more conventional instrumentation, there is still plenty of oddness: cheesy synth sounds no other band would play, bells, dog barks... Influences wheel in from every direction, and the beauty of the Beta Band is that they will incorporate them, no matter what the source, often within a single song. Out-Side, for example has drum-pounding 60s rock that suddenly - without warning - becomes a gentle ballad, and then back again. Each song is completely different from the previous one, and yet still sounds like a Beta Band song. It's a better album than Hot Shots II, which was a fine album, and if you liked that, you'll love this. After a chequered history that saw them nearly dropped by their label, Regal, it's good to see a band as unique as the Beta Band come back stronger than ever, with a clutch of songs bursting with energy and catchy riffs. There's not a bad song on this album, and you can't say that about most releases. Playlouder [link] Reviewer: Jeremy Allen Rating: 4 stars What is it we find alluring about the Beta Band? It’s not the beards, is it? In fact, the swarthy ones could well be infested with pasty flecks and lice by the looks of them - ­ reality sees them somewhat removed from the comic book superheroes present on the artwork of ‘Heroes To Zeros’. There’s certainly nothing sexy about the way they sound either, warbling like shamanic weirdos or druids, rather than filthy sexgod rock stars. The Beta Band are the weird Uncles of rock, eccentric, a bit wiffy, and yet somehow likable. It’s their peculiarity and originality that sets them apart, of course, though musically they’ve failed to deliver since not long after their inception. We’ve rooted for them and been scantly rewarded, but at last they’ve done it - 'Heroes To Zeros’ is great and they know it. And who could doubt them with their track record on honesty! Single ‘Assessment’ is a fair indication of the confident form they are currently riding on. The fact they are almost entirely in control (producing this album themselves for the first time) has worked out marvellously, when there was always a risk it might have backfired (Nigel Godrich is the man responsible for the mixing, which was no doubt a major help). It doesn’t even seem to bother the Betas that some of their introductions are reminiscent of rock’s crustiest protagonists - ‘Assessment’ begins like U2, the excellent, surging ‘Out-Side’ definitely starts like INXS’ ‘Suicide Blonde’, and the opening vocal line on ‘Space’ is pretty much identical to Bob Dylan’s ‘The Mighty Quinn’ - to the point where you wonder if it’s been done deliberately. There are obviously too many examples of Pink Floyd's influence to mention as well, but it’s the way they develop each track so lovingly, and with the sole intention of stretching boundaries, that impresses. They are natural voyagers of discovery, sailing in a different direction to everyone else, and because of this ‘Heroes To Zeros’ is unmistakably the Beta Band, and unmistakably like no other record made so far this year. A psychedelic tapestry of funk, hip-hop, jazz, blues, indie, and the odd yogic style chanting. The variety is impressive too. ‘Easy’ is essentially a jazz skiffle number plundering Stevie Wonder for the best of his left hand, ‘Pure For’ could well be an early blues hymn, ‘Liquid Bird’ is good 1980s indie, and ‘Wonderful’ is tripped out and dreamy baggy that makes you think of toadstools and flying horses if you shut your eyes. Well it does me anyway. In a parallel universe where artists are awarded on merit, the "zeroes" in the title of the album, made with typical self-deprecating wit, would actually be referring to the large number of noughts in the huge bank balance. Rockfeedback [link] Reviewer: Toby L Rating: 4/5 stars The Beta Band don’t half thwack us with some neo-psychedelic, wall-of-sound trip-outs, eh readers? If there’s a band more fascinated in lazy, foggy, muggy wig-outs and space-age harmonies, then we’ve yet to hear ‘em. And despite the zeal that’s attached to being ‘unique, man’, The Beta Band are still wholly accessible. And despite jibes from Nicky Wire in the early days of the band’s inception that they’ll ‘never sell any records’, Steve Mason and his fellow Scots buccaneers may not have exactly set up a weekly residency on ‘Top Of The Pops’, but have at least managed to amass a catalogue o’ modern treats and a sizeable fanbase you’d fail to sneer at. Their latest, ‘Heroes To Zeros’, marks a misleading title – our threesome are as compelling and radiant as ever. In fact, this could be the band’s marked collapsing into a love of composing The Pop Song. Though Mason and crew are as fidgetingly widescreen as per the norm, this time, the subtleties are less blink and you’ll miss it and arrangements are unashamed in their gargantuan, expansive border-pushing – take recent-single ‘Assessment’: a resolute, knowing advancement in stature, employing a cacophony of brass and thudding bass, and remarkably like Ian Brown. What else we’re awarded: the funky, playful bounce and shuffle of a harmonica-strewn ‘Easy’; distantly stoned ‘Wonderful’, with its piano-hammering, break-out chorus; ‘Out-side’s scrappy garage-blues – replete with yelping dog-barks and seagull samples; mantra-like ‘Space Beatle’ (a come-down anthem in the making, until a sparkling, miraculous, melting ‘I love you to pieces’ refrain); zapping 80s synths via ‘Rhododendron’; awkward stop-starts in ‘Liquid Bird’; and an undeniable pinnacle in the build-up/gospel enchantment of round-the-campfire stomp, ‘Pure For’. All serves to conclude: The Beta Band in 2004? Defiantly, yearningly, an even (groan) Betta band. RockMidgets.com [link] Reviewer: Ros Bell Rating: 5/5 The Beta Band has always signified brilliance in the alternative music scene, and finally they have returned with the much awaited 'Heroes to Zeros'. They do not disappoint. They've never been famous for writing typically 'catchy sing along' tunes, but 'Heroes to Zeroes' has tracks which will unexplainably stick in your head for days, but not in the usual 'sing along pop song' type of way. They've achieved an ethereal sounding album with truly memorable songs without sacrificing their signature rich vocal harmonies. It's these harmonies that continue to astound me as the album goes on. There is much to be said for a band who can write such complexity without overwhelming a song with it. Steve Mason says "We've carried on trying to hone out sound down to a pop song"; but don't let that put you off. Their sound is more pop in the sense that its more accessible, but thankfully they haven't abandoned their alternative roots. Their eccentricity remains integral to their song writing, but through instrumentation within the fabric of the tracks rather than through lyrics, as in previous albums. Lyrically this album is much easier to follow and less surreal than past albums. I'm not sure if this suggests they've been laying off the drugs, or if Mason has found love, either way it works well for them. The lyrics of "Troubles" are frankly beautiful and polish a gloriously moving song. The most surprising track off 'Heroes to Zeros' is the funk inspired 'Easy', which employs more orthodox bass-riff driven song writing technique, which adds depth to the album as a whole. Whilst 'Outside' is out-and-out rock which is almost psychedelic in places. 'Heroes to Zeros' is incredibly diverse, proving that not only is the Beta Band capable of writing ambient chillout alternative music, but they can also provide juicy riffs when required. Every one of the twelve tracks is a gem and thoroughly deserving of the 5/5 I'm going to give it. Please make every effort to see this band on their upcoming tour. You owe it to music. Silent Uproar [link] Reviewer: m Rating: 4.75/5 If The Moody Blues started making music in 2004, they would probably sound, on their best day, like The Beta Band. In fact, I’m willing to bet that the lush layers and dreamy psychedelic music on Heroes to Zeros would make the purveyors of trippy rock with a conscience rather envious. More than just a record, Heroes to Zeros was a “meeting of the minds” for the UK foursome. This was the first time the guys produced themselves, and the result is an album that is uncompromisingly innovative and imaginative. There is nothing here that doesn’t make sense, and the music is more cohesive than ever. If you read SU’s interview with John Maclean, then you know that the process for recording this time was also unique. Each member had the freedom and technology to create something individually for every track. When they got together to listen to and assemble the pieces, what eventually ended up on the record was the best of everything that was brought to the table. And believe me, it shows. The first single, “Assessment,” is a full-on rock song complete with dueling guitars and a politically fueled video portraying “the history of human warfare.” The tumbling rhythms of “Space” and janglely bounce of “Easy” are two of my favorite tracks. “Troubles” delicate strains express the band’s feelings about the tumultuous climate of the world around us and in our own back yard: “It’s about time we had a laugh; I know that I’ve been cryin; too many people; too many troubles; too many miles of lyin.’” “Out-Side” features tribal beats and a variety of sound bites from dog barks and trains to thunderstorms and this weird sound that made me think my cell phone was about to explode before I realized it was the song. And by far to me, the coolest song on the record is “Liquid Bird.” There is an almost machine gun-like beat in the background and rippin guitars. It almost sounds incongruous when you consider the rest of the disc, but there is enough of the band’s rich layering to make it fit perfectly. Really, the whole experience of the disc is one that would be a good opener for folks who have yet to get into the band as well as a rewarding ride for anyone who’s been a fan for years. The Beta Band didn’t have to seek indie cred with Heroes to Zeros; they are already critical and fan favorites, and yet you end up feeling better and better about loving them every time you pop the disc in. This is one club that I’m pretty happy to belong to. Stylus Magazine [link] Reviewer: Nick Southall Rating: 8/10 The Beta Band have been threatening to make a truly, honest-to-gosh brilliant record ever since they first emerged with the Champion Versions EP in 1997. Consensus would have us believe that the uniquely creative muse captured on The Three EPs, a compilation which brought together Champion Versions with the group’s other EPs (The Patty Patty Sound and Los Amigos Del Beta Bandidos), has overshadowed their subsequent releases. While this may be true of their disastrous debut album proper, it undersells their understated second album, the R&B inflected Hot Shots II, which failed to have the same impact on the press and public as those early EPs, despite its assured accomplishment. Seven years on from their first release, have The Beta Band finally managed to distil the alchemy they always seemed to be verging on? Heroes To Zeroes has been almost two years in the making, the band putting the songs together over eighteen months and then spending seven weeks at Rockfield Studios in Wales recording and producing it themselves before bringing in Nigel Godrich to mix the album. Taking time out to allow the material to slowly gestate and breathe was a good idea; where early material often seemed wilfully experimental (the fifteen-minute “The Monolith” from The Patty Patty Sound, and almost the entire first album) and Hot Shots II was so low-key as to be almost non-existent at times, Heroes To Zeros strikes a balance between enervation, subtlety and creativity that the group first fully demonstrated on Los Amigos…, the best of those early EPs. The opening thirty seconds of “Assessment”, a post-punk rumble with a guitar riff cribbed from U2’s very early days, could fool you into thinking Heroes To Zeroes is a backwards step, but by the time Steve Mason’s doleful and distant voice has had time to stretch harmonies towards interstellar space at the end of each line, and the horns have kicked in for the Psychedelic Furs-esque finale, it’s apparent that they’ve lost none of their playful instinct and have also remembered that sometimes the messy bits can be the most compelling. They also sound as if they’ve rediscovered how much fun it is to play as a band—never have Richard Greentree’s bass and Robin Jones’ ambivalently clattering drums sounded better, nor Mason’s guitar, the organic group work embellished just so as ever by John MacLean’s electronics and samples (although to lineate individual roles in such a way is probably to misunderstand the nature of the group). And so the twelve tracks on Heroes To Zeroes refract the group’s past follies through their successes, reaching towards a moment in which technology and tradition, creativity and craft stand hand in hand. The multi-sectioned “Space” is one of the sweetest songs (ostensibly) about the Milky Way that you’ll ever hear; “Out Side” recalls Disco Inferno in its scratchy guitars, electronic burbles, barking dogs and train/plane/sea noises. Guitars are at the forefront again for “Liquid Bird”, probably the loudest, most abrasive thing they’ve committed to tape—the likes of Lightning Bolt may make it sound like Belle & Sebastian, but rock is relative, and thus it seems positively dangerous. Elsewhere “Troubles” and “Simple” swoon under romantic strings as Mason beguilingly bemoans something indefinable, or else declares love with a degree of sincerity that disarms and charms in equal measure, and the gently electronic album closer “Pure For” is, simply, one of the loveliest things you’ll hear for a long timee. Heroes To Zeroes isn’t quite an unqualified success—almost nothing could justify the hype they received way back when—but it is further evidence that, if not messiahs, The Beta Band are very talented boys. Sunday Herald [link] Reviewer: Leon McDermott Rating: 3/5 stars Patti Smith has spent three decades being contrary, but shambling Scots magpies The Beta Band proved that you don’t need to be old to be grumpy. They dismissed their first album as “a pile of shit” before it was even released; interviews around the time of the follow-up, 2001’s Hot Shots II, saw them in argumentative mood. So, what of their third? Heroes To Zeros – the Beta Band Go Rock, if you will – is haphazard and tries to cram in more ideas than strictly necessary, but this time, it works. Opening track Assessment is all growling guitars and barely-suppressed anger; Easy is a bouncy delight which makes like a jaunty Simon & Garfunkel being beaten up by a toy funk band, and Out-Side has samples of the beach, tribal drums, classic Pixies-esque riffage, and the delightful line “I wish I had a pot to piss in / I’d take it outside to catch a little rain”. There’s nothing here to compare with the sun-kissed majesty of Dry The Rain, but there are signs they could match it if they tried a little harder The Sunday Times, Culture Magazine [link] Reviewer: Dan Cairns Rating: 2/3 stars Is it possible to have set expectations of a Beta Band album? The 3EPs, followed by their still bewildering eponymous debut, then 2001's tighter, more electronic Hot Shots II: none of these seemed to lead into the next. Rather, they nailed down a definition of the band (to fans) as intriguing experimentalists and (to detractors) self-indulgent noodlers. Beefing up their sound, pumping up the volume and figuratively opening the studio door to let some air in, on Heroes To Zeros the Betas continue to baffle and delight. That elusive coherence seems tantalisingly within their grasp and ours; yet coherence begins to seem far too tame and predictable when, on tracks as wayward and brilliant as Lion Thief, Troubles and Space Beatle, they fashion a sound this insanely inspired. Planet Sound, Teletext [link] Reviewer: n/a Rating: 8/10 Ever since Dry The Rain in 1997, many bands have tried to emulate the Beta's shuffling beats. Here's why none has ever succeeded. While nobody could ever accusse the Betas of being commercial, it's surprisingly direct ride. The combatative Assessement is typical of an album which hones their outstanding way with beats to its purest form yet. Forget the cantankerous public image - anybody who crafts songs as sweet as Wonderful is on the side of the angels. [thanks to bobby_steels for transcribing] The Beat Surrender [link] Reviewer: Small Beer Rating: 8/10 The Beta Band in my mind anyway, has always been one of the most original British Bands around. So what's stopped them from being the greatest band in the world then? On the run up to the release of their debut album, the awkwardly abstruse it has to be said, 3 EPs, they were hyped as the next big thing. The band responded by claiming it was "the worst record to come out all year", and "the next one will be even worse". People believed them and the album bombed. Three years later and the band record Hot Shots II. Still with their trademark weirdness included but this time with some accessible, dare we say radio-friendly tracks on there - in particular Squares, which used a sample from The Gunter Hillman Choir's Daydream. You begin to start thinking if something can go wrong for the band, it will when just before the release of Squares, some shit nonentity of a band called I Monster release a song using exactly the same sample played over a shit beat. Radio 1 being the purveyors of all things musically great (yeah right) decide to playlist I Monster instead and the rest is history. 2004 and along comes Heroes to Zeros. This could be the album that finally gets them noticed in the mainstream. It's 100% more accessible than anything they've done previously, with most of the tracks actually coming with the band singing rather than mumbling, but I'm sure there's one or two loyal fans out there thinking they've sold out for the chance of one last crack at it. Assessment, the first track and first single from the album, starts simply enough with what sounds like a Simple Minds guitar homage but eventually launched into a three-part mini-symphony - this is the Beta Band afterall! It's got a great video too. Directed by band members John McLean and Robin Jones, it's basically a history of the world in under four minutes! Other standout tracks for me were the cosmic-pop that was Space and otherworldly, Out-side, the closest thing the band will come to garage rock, not counting the ray-guns and barking dogs of course! Listening to the album more and more you come to realise they haven't sold out at all, they've just moved on. Heroes to Zeros is still the psychedelic, genre defying stuff we'd all expect from the Beta Band, they've just decided to try and rock out and get a little funky. Nothing wrong with that is there? Talking about the release (a development in itself for the reclusive band), I heard Steve Mason say, "We wanted to make a much more positive record. I think we just wanted to make a positive record for us, for when we play live, not like when we play "The Hard One" (a ten minute misery fest from their debut) which has all these depressing lyrics. You can only be depressed for so long when you have to come out the other side and be more positive towards society. It had to be done." Happy days indeed. Welcome back lads, we've missed you... The Guardian [link] Reviewer: Dorian Lynskey Rating: 3/5 stars On Simple, the penultimate track on the Beta Band's third album, Steve Mason glumly croons: "I tried to do my own thing but the trouble with your own thing is you end up on your own." Is he trying to tell us something? When The Beta Band first appeared, they were so fearsomely original that they seemed unstoppable. But thanks to a perversely abstruse debut album, a sour-faced public persona and an inability to score a hit, their star has faded. Despite recent talk of finally cracking the mainstream, Heroes To Zeros lacks the firepower. True, nobody else could come up with a song like Out-Side, a rainbow-hued splurge of garage-rock, Beatles harmonies, rayguns and barking dogs, or the multipart cosmic pop of Space, but several tracks are shapeless and patchy, and Mason's floating-in-space vocals sound cripplingly disengaged. For all its virtues, Heroes To Zeros is too little, too late. The Observer [link] Reviewer: Akin Ojumu Rating: n/a Pop CD of the Week From Beta to Alpha It's frustrating being a fan of The Beta Band. Hardly the most prolific of bands; they've released three albums since 1997 and the first, by their own admission, was terrible. Cited by Radiohead as an inspiration during their Kid A phase, and admired by Oasis, the Chemical Brothers, Primal Scream and the Verve, they were then immortalised on film in High Fidelity and became a band that any self-respecting muso had to have an opinion about. When the mercurial quartet released their Three EPs set in 1999 - a dozen tracks of brilliantly-realised, shuffling lo-fi - they were the coolest band in the country; a breath of fresh air as Britpop expired. Since those heady days they have never quite managed to fulfil that promise, although they remained a fantastic live act, offering hints of what they might achieve. Apart from the day job, they kept busy with a couple of solo projects, as well as making short films, creating art, DJing and producing their own magazine, Flower Press. Alongside bands such as Simian and Super Furry Animals, they recreated psychedelic rock for the Noughties. The Beta Band added hip hop beats and Steve Mason's doleful, melodious voice, creating experimental music that often sounds unique. Heroes to Zeros is a more robust offering than their previous releases, bolstered by louder guitars and sharper tunes. At best, The Beta Band are transcendental; at worse, they meander, recycling a groove until they run out of ideas. There is not much of the latter here. Instead this is sublime music, with overlapping chants and harmonies, cut-up samples and loops and other weird sounds - it's like they've immersed themselves in the Beach Boys and the Incredible String Band, then fast-forwarded to Mo Wax and ambient electronica. 'Assessment' is the nearest they have ever come to a radio-friendly single - an exuberant pop song with a dark edge and an ascending then descending chorus line. 'Wonderful' is indeed just that, a feather-light, beautiful ballad where Mason exhales, rather than sings, over chirping noises, handclaps and a hint of feedback. 'Space' boasts a jaunty call and refrain before switching gears into a dreamy monologue; it starts off on the dancefloor and ends up in the chill-out room. Although the Beta Band's music is so deceptively complex, 'chilling out' is often the last thing you want to do while listening to it. 'Troubles' is a come-down song that drifts out of the speakers, while 'Space Beatle' builds through repetition into something startling. Often characterised as gloomy art rockers, the Beta Band have discovered a lightness of touch. 'Lion Thief' starts off as glorious pastoral pop, then, predictably, goes off on a tangent when they add an old-skool rhythm track. The effect is both unsettling and soothing; it makes you wonder how they make it all work. Apparently they spent 18 months fine-tuning this self-produced record, and the attention to detail is obvious, although Heroes to Zeros doesn't seem over-produced. In fact, much of it is endearingly shambolic and it seems as if they've found their true voice. Heroes to Zeros will already sound familiar to The Beta Band fans who've seen their theatrical live shows. This is an album filled with influences and moods, with depths and textures that slowly reveal themselves. The perpetual outsiders have pulled off a near-impossible trick - they've made a record to attract mainstream buyers without selling out. [thanks to velocityboy for posting the link] The Observer Music Monthly [link] Reviewer: Craig McLean Rating: 5/5 stars Number 2 in the Top Ten albums of the month After a series of disappointments, the inventive if grumpy four-piece add tunes, ideas and guitars to their stoner groove - to dazzling effect, says Craig McLean (Regal, £13.99) Contrary Buggers, the Beta Band. Thrillingly so, but also maddeningly. After their first three releases - magical four-track EPs, each a guitar-and-samples suite that was hypnotic, choral and pop-psychedelic - they lost the plot on their debut album. The self-titled set was an epic folly in which their grasp of melody was overshadowed by the mad (the self-explanatory 'Beta Band Rap'), the bad (the calamitous funk'n'rap cobblers of 'Dance o'er the Border') and the Bonnie (the 10-minute 'The Hard One' sampled Tyler's 'Total Eclipse of the Heart'). In a pre-emptive strike, the band themselves were the first to slag off the album. Thankfully, the record's other 'element' never saw the light of day: 'Happiness and Colour' and 'The Hut' were umpteen-minute-long bits of ambient noodling that did no one any favours. The Anglo-Scots foursome hated being dubbed stoners, but frankly they were asking for it. They pronounced themselves much more satisfied with 2001's Hot Shots II. But in these hip hop heads' rush to embrace the exactitudes of cutting-edge production, they simply succeeded in smoothing off all their interesting bumps. The result: a second album adrift in one long groove. Even the best song, 'Squares', was wrong-footed by the appearance earlier that year of I Monster's 'Daydream in Blue', which used the same sample from the Gunter Kallmann Choir's 'Daydream'. The Beta Band released it as a single anyway. Meanwhile, as their concerts became rightly feted for their inventive use of DJing, films and electronics, the band themselves gained a reputation for being grumpy and ridiculously averse to discussing their music. You can just imagine the grumbling that took place round Beta Band Towers at the prominence given their music in High Fidelity. Hey ho. Where once this awkward squad seemed poised for greatness, a combination of bad luck and self-sabotage seemed to stop them in their tracks. Heroes to Zeroes is the moment where, at last, the Beta Band's myriad ideas come together. The band say that 'topical global issues of terrorism, war and governmental mediocrity' weighed on their minds during its making, but lyrically it's hard to discern how exactly. The songs, however, are certainly the most robust since those early EPs. Their rehabilitation of guitars, here pushed to the fore alongside their formidable mastery of computer technology, undoubtedly helps in this regard. These tunes sing out, loud and proud. 'Rhododendron', a 96-second instrumental artfully crafted from church organ, bongos, synthesizer and tinkling bells, acts as a kind of palate-cleansing sorbet before the tumultuous 'Painted Bird' (Spiritualized gone drum'n'bass). This side of the band - the belligerently noisy one - also gets a shout in 'Assessment', the declamatory first single whose anthemic wall of guitars recalls PiL's 'Public Image', and 'Out-Side', a barrelling romp full of dogs barking, tumbling drums, charging guitars and a kaleidoscope of samples and multitracked vocals. It's near-perfect - one gold star is deducted for ditching the original and way-better title, 'Pot Pissin'. Their way with mantric atmospherics reaches its zenith on the beautiful 'Wonderful'. Steve Mason's echoey croon sits right inside the ear on 'Troubles', a plangent lament that has the frontman oozing empathy as he decides: 'It's about time that I said hello to all those lonely people, the ones at the back who could never talk back through all their tears and sadness.' 'Simple' is equally bewitching, lent wings by a soaring string passage. Gloriously inventive, exquisitely produced - the band did it themselves after junking a planned collaboration with Tom Rothrock (Badly Drawn Boy, Beck) - and magically tuneful, Heroes to Zeroes is the album the Beta Band have been threatening to make for seven years. Spot-on, chaps. The Onion - A.V. Club [link] Reviewer: Keith Phipps Rating: n/a "I tried to do my own thing," Beta Band vocalist Steve Mason sings late on the group's new album. "But the trouble with your own thing is, you end up on your own." That glum assessment and Heroes To Zeros' self-deprecating title could signal an artistic retreat for the determinedly eccentric Scotsmen, but the album doesn't really bear out that suggestion. Then again, it's hard to imagine a CD that opens with a burst of U2-inspired guitar, and closes with a series of bloops and the band riding a snare drum, sounding like a retreat of any kind. The Beta Band had one of its best moments immortalized in High Fidelity, when John Cusack stirred up a crowded record store with the early single "Dry The Rain." Since then, The Beta Band has fostered a reputation for unpredictability (even turning out an unpredictable flop of a first album), but with its weird blend of modernized psychedelia, sonic sweep, and oblique but sincere emotions, that song contained the genetic material for what was to come. Heroes To Zeros builds on 2001's Hot Shots II, letting the band find a balance between pop snap and infinite drone. As much chanted as sung, "Space" keeps threatening to fall apart or lapse into silence, but only grows more hypnotic as it goes along. "Assessment," which builds on what sounds like a guest appearance from The Edge, gives the group one of its most indelible, accessible moments, in a track that owes more to a club's tension and release than to the verse-chorus-verse structure of a classic 45. The Beta Band has learned that repetition can yield its own kind of insight. On "Space Beatle," Mason keeps repeating the same phrase ("love you to pieces") until it starts to take on a different meaning with each occurrence—unless it means nothing at all. Six years into its recording career, The Beta Band remains as enigmatic as ever, sounding like future-pop on one track, an alternate-universe jam band on the next. It's difficult to get a handle on what the group is, but tough to deny that it's always doing its own thing. As long as there are listeners with an ear for adventure, The Beta Band seems unlikely to end up on its own The Sunday Times, The Month CD [link] Reviewer: Dan Cairns Rating: n/a This will frustrate those uptight and unimaginative enough to believe that categories are everything, and delight fans for whom the Beta Band's state of constant sonic evolution is the point, not the problem. After the fragmentary inscrutability of The Three EPs compilation and their eponymous debut, and the (only relatively) straightforward song-making of Hot Shots II, the band's third album owes as much to a beefier live sound as it does to their penchant for in-studio tinkering and tail-chasing. The result is a record that's invigorating, dependably baffling and already sound like a future classic. Flicking between trippy guitar rock, woozy pastoral pop, electro-funk and barbershop folk, standouts such as Assessment, Wonderful, Troubles and Pure For are as good as anything this great group have produced The Telegraph [link] Reviewer: Ben Thompson Rating: n/a Sometimes, the experiments that don’t come off can be just as valuable as the ones that do. An abandoned collaboration with Beck and Badly Drawn Boy producer Tom Rothrock seems to have focused the collective mind of this notoriously stubborn Anglo-Scottish quartet in much the same way as the Strokes’ abortive flirtation with Radiohead’s in-house catalyst Nigel Godrich did before 2003’s Room on Fire. Godrich gets a mixing credit here, and the album that results is the Beta Band’s most coherent to date, combining the gleeful psychedelic skiffle of their early singles, the grand ambitions of their heroically wayward debut, and the subterranean R&B underpinning of 2001’s Hot Shots II. Assessment’s pristine guitar blizzard even raises the chilling prospect that the band may have tidied their sound up too much. Happily, the barking dogs of Out-Side, and Rhododendron’s primary-school chime-bars prove that some delightful rough edges remain. The Times [link] Reviewer: Mark Sutherland Rating: 4/5 stars The first two Beta Band albums are the musical equivalent of your local arthouse cinema: you know they exist, you’d all be sad if they didn’t, but you just haven’t got around to spending any time there. Heroes to Zeros sees the said cinema ditching all that turgid stuff and block-booking Kill Bill Volume 2: it’s still ground-breaking work, but this time everyone will want to be part of it. Flakiness is replaced with confidence, noodling ditched in favour of simple song-writing and untapped potential supplanted by fully realised ambition. This is the sort of music Radiohead should be making, pushing boundaries rather than simply erecting them. It fuses funk with indie, programmed beats with organic instrumentation and stoned mantras with angry rockers. Space will make you dance; Out-Side, think; Simple, cry, and almost all of it will make you ask “Is this the most ironically titled album since Wham!’s Fantastic, or what?” tinymixtapes [link] Reviewer: gretel Rating: 3.5/5 With The Three EPs, The Beta Band opened their own doors to artistic expression, allowing them to vary their palate of sounds from folk, electronica, psychedelia, and even trip-hop. The album (if it can be called that) was for me one of the most poignant contacts I have had with music. Though drawn out, every track stood out in its own right and contributed to the wonderful, albeit perhaps coincidental, cohesion of the album. Novel yet oddly familiar, it struck a remote chord in me that few other records had done before, or have since. It promised with steadfast certainty that excellent things were to come. Though the band themselves criticized their debut self-titled album, it managed to land them a place on tour with Radiohead. Their follow-up, Hot Shots II, saw the band shifting towards minimalist pieces-- some successful, some not so much, yet always captivating. Needless to say, I expected heaven and more from their third full-length, Heroes To Zeroes. Instead, I found myself asking why I was not equally moved, why, despite its innovativeness, I was not taken aback, as I had been other times. There is very little experimentation on the album, at least in relation to previous albums, but there is also a wider spectrum of songs. The production is superb, but is not key to the songs. It's as if more thought was put into the songs themselves than what flourishes would go around them. Notably, the album makes an effort to instate melody and hooks into its songs. This is especially obvious on tracks like "Easy" and "Out-Side" -- which is no atrocity, really, seeing as they are both pulled off so well (the latter being so infectious as to appear fit be degraded and run in a VH1 commercial). The last two tracks, "Simple" and "Pure For," however, exemplify just the kind of insipidity that can result when The Beta Band looses its willingness to fuck around with its songs, and relies solely on making a pop melody. The single "Assessment" is one of the most successful tracks on the album. Unlike the opening tracks of previous albums, it makes its statement from the outset, and doesn't let up until about halfway through where it lifts its head to catch its breath, only to dive back in with guitar to augment the song's already powerful attack. The first minutes of "Liquid Bird," attempt the same effect, but fall short, providing nothing more than a forced effort to be dynamic. But, as with most other songs on the album, it starts in one place and ends in another miles away -- and, luckily, where it ends is a wonderfully elegant land of trip-hop and strings, reminiscent of Hot Shot's II's, "Squares." The stand-out track here, however, is, "Lion Thief," to which I will gladly devote the concluding paragraph. For all the reservations I had about this album, and all the side-stepping and back-pedaling I did with my review rating, this song was the only one I never thought twice about. Instantly memorable, yet also revealing upon further listens, it conjures up Talk Talk circa Spirit Of Eden, only instead of droning for minutes upon end, it manages to encapsulate a mystical acoustic guitar and piano feel alongside an absolutely remarkable Middle-Eastern-like drum pattern in less then four minutes. Were The Beta Band's catalogue not already inundated with gems, I would have no qualms calling it the band's high point. The rest of the album never does reach similar heights, but several times it does come close. And, for that alone the album can be regarded as nothing but another Beta Band success tohellwith.co.uk [link] Reviewer: Loz Rating: n/a to call something or someone ‘quirky’ is faint praise at the best of times. particularly at the indie end of the music kingdom, it’s a word often linked to the nauseating, asinine meanderings of such best-forgotten chancers as gomez, space and (brace yourself) bentley rhythm ace. the beta band have often found themselves at this business end of such descriptions, which seemed pretty apt over the years of disowning albums, kooky hip-hop-isms and generally shunning all that was shunnable. hasty decline appeared more than feasible, but instead the hiatus has ended with ‘heroes to zeros’, released off the back of the rather fantastic (and surprisingly loud) single ‘assessment’. terrible (and indeed, very quirky) artwork aside, the whole thing is frankly a bit of a triumph; a fulsome, renaissanced-up depiction of the transcendence of whimsy. this isn’t to say that the beta’s have lost their eclectic tendencies- within the first 4 tracks we’ve gone from ‘assessment’s driving space-rock to the twangy funk of ‘easy’, stopping en route at various points of fun-filled sonic experimentation. but the beauty of ‘heroes to zeros’ is that this mixture never sounds contrived; there’s an organic warmth across the production, instrumentation and steve mason’s yawning vocals that gives the feel of a ridiculously successful jam session. though occasionally this means the songs flit past a little, there’s enough going on that the album keeps jerking its way back, whether via the hymnal, magoo-aping ‘space beatle’ or ‘liquid bird’s shuddering dance intro (which requires listening to on headphones for full effect- if possibly not when operating machinery). the whole thing comes to a peak on penulimtate track ‘simple’, a rather sweet tale of lonelieness over swooning, melancholic pop. as the fade-out chants ‘you end up on your own’, it’s almost like intruding on a private joke. the beta band are certainly flying solo, but they’ve made it seem like a pretty decent place to be UK Fusion [link] Reviewer: Steve Rudd Rating: 5/5 Album number three: 12 tracks, 42 minutes. Their first single 'Assessment' opens proceedings, delving into a dazzling and wondrous affair, from the far-flung originality of 'Space’, to the acoustic loveliness of 'The Lion Thief' and the uplifting bliss of 'Space Beetle’. The four piece admit that they're on a quest to write THE perfect 'pop' songs, and with these 12 tunes they more than succeed, with 'Rhododendron' acknowledging their love of experimenting with synths, being a perfectly demented 'pop' instrumental, before the more intensely rocking nature of 'Liquid Bird' takes flight. Mixing a stunning array of svelte samples and beats with good old fashioned guitar interplay, much of this album was recorded in the studio in a 'live setting’, as opposed to clinically multi-tracking their songs. Steve Mason, as ever, leads the vocals, though The Beta Band are famed for their elegant and sublimely sung harmonies. Since their self-titled album in 1999, their inventiveness has been impossible to suppress and they wield a similar hard-to-dislike charm as The Flaming Lips or The Divine Comedy, although The Beta Band seem to be more technology-embracing than the other two aforementioned groups. Everything on From Heroes To Zeros are 'pop' songs, yet they also boldly go where few have dared to venture before, given the many clever samples and unpredictable twists and turns that they take en-route. Considering that, the acoustic simplicity of the appropriately titled 'Simple' might just be the album highlight when all is sung and done. Yahoo Launch [link] Reviewer: Sharon O’Connell Rating: 8/10 stars It’s hard not to interpret the title of the third album by The Beta Band as both a tilt at the music industry's set-'em-up-knock-'em-down attitude and an acknowledgement that it's a fate which might well befall them, too. They were loved from the start by critics and fans alike; both were beguiled by the Zeitgeist-defying charms of the three EPs and debut LP which arrived – wonky hip hop and dub beats, woozy psychedelia, punk, pastoral folk, skiffle, molten pop and DIY production in tow – while the champagne supernova of Oasis was still emitting a faint glow. That, however, was then. It's now three years since The Beta Band's last album, "Hot Shots II" and, although that might not be very long in the life of a petrified forest, it's aeons for a pop group. Early success certainly took its toll. Founder member Gordon Anderson was forced to quit years ago due to mental ill health, guitarist/vocalist Steve Mason has long suffered from depression and, at one point, the group's reputation for reticence in interviews and general orneriness threatened to overshadow their music. Time away from the public eye to focus on the job in hand has dissolved the image problem, but . . . .the difficult third album - to Beta Band or not to Beta Band? Purists will quite possibly complain that "Heroes To Zeros" lacks the out-field stylistic pitching, bedroom ambience and sweet, almost luminously naive hesitancy that characterised those early records, but purists and progress have never gotten along. This is the sound of an emboldened, beefier Beta Band, certainly, the new songs sounding fuller, freer and more confident than ever before, but it's almost certainly also the sound of four happier, more centred creatives and only a champion churl would deny them that. That said, The Beta Band's vital, suffused melancholia is still in play, whether flashed briefly, as on the peppy "Out-Side" – which makes brilliant use of a dog's bark as rhythmic punctuation – or flooding out from the vaguely La's-like "Simple". Everywhere, tunes and dynamic definition balance the band's former obsessions with texture and ambience: check the clarion, Edge-like guitar coda that drives the opening "Assessment"; the languid, stoner pacing of "Space"; the casual, soft-shoe shuffle propelling the aptly titled "Easy"; the Velvet Underground-meets-Badfinger hybrid that is "Wonderful"; the fabulously fluid "Liquid Bird", which suggests "Don’t Fear The Reaper" as played by Pink Floyd in a bathysphere and yet still comes up trumps. "Too many troubles, too many troubles. . .it's time for us to live and laugh. . . .and laugh and laugh and laugh. . .," Mason sings in his gorgeously glazed tones at one point. Well hell, yes. Forget heroes and zeros. Happily, The Beta Band seem to have settled on self. »Buy Heroes To Zeros from Amazon.co.uk »Buy Heroes To Zeros from Amazon.com ^top