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Date: Thursday 29th April 2004
Venue: Sheffield Leadmill
Capacity: 800
Venue website: www.leadmill.co.uk
Setlist:
01. Rhododendron
02. Inner Meet Me
03. Assessment
04. Squares
05. Troubles
06. Al Sharp
07. Wonderful
08. Out-Side
09. She's The One
10. Lion Thief
11. Easy
12. Push It Out
13. Simple
14. Liquid Bird
15. Quiet
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16. Dog's Got A Bone
17. Space
18. Broke
Notes:
- support from The Magnificents
- first date of UK tour
- Steve announced that it was John's birthday tonight -- except this was just to wind up John who had mistakenly played the sample for Push It Out one song early. John's birthday is actually in December ;)
The Guardian [direct link]
Reviewer: Dave Simpson
Rating: 4/5 stars
The Beta Band are among the few mavericks operating in British pop. However, after five years celebrating the Betas for not being just another pop group, some have started criticising the Scottish band for the same reason. Their obstructive interview technique hasn't helped. But their idiosyncratic stance has won them one of the most loyal fan bases in pop - people who accept that following the Betas can be a challenge.
After a two-year break, watching them live is still like observing a team of Kwik-Fit fitters. Members fiddle with knobs and swap instruments; Richard Greentree crosses the stage with a stool on his head. It is more playful than previous engagements, with Steve Mason even urging us to wish keyboardist John Maclean happy birthday.
However, showmanship is sacrificed in favour of attention to the music. The Betas echo the Stone Roses, hip-hop, Gregorian chants and Can. Their sound is forever metamorphosing, original and unmistakable. Around them, monitors display share prices, while a map of the world rings the UK with the words: "Select your team." Whatever it means, it feels terribly important and thoughtprovoking.
Typically, the set avoids old favourites in favour of virtually the entire new album, with Robin Jones's loosewristed drumming providing power and funk where the record is more hypnotic. The wondrous psychedelic pop symphony of Space suggests the Betas may yet surprise everybody with a whopping hit. In the meantime, a standing ovation should encourage them to keep ploughing their own furrow while the wider world catches up.
Drowned In Sound [direct link]
Reviewer: Dom Gourlay
Rating: 4/5
“Our sound is the future” insist The Magnificents, “I’ve seen the blueprint it’s written in concrete.”
Sadly, only 14 other people witness their sporadic foray into the most bovine areas of the past (think John Foxx-era Ultravox, Cabaret Voltaire’s avant garde feedback discoveries and… Joy Division) which would possibly devour the most sanguine Michael J Fox wannabes among us.
Yeah it’s been done before. Ask your parents. Yeah the singer has a significant case of Tourettes syndrome matched only by Eamon whats-his-name’s foul tongue and Ian Curtis’ spasmodic out-of-time “dancing” to his colleagues’ deelie-bopping beats.
Still, if the Magnificents herald a recycled vision of Edinburgh circa 1984, then seeing the Beta Band in the Leadmill again is like stepping back in time (BC – Before Coldplay to be exact) where the thought of a bunch of musicians creating chilled out rhythmic séances to stoned beats wasn’t quite the puke induced format Martin, Knights et al latterly created.
Sure, the cynics will hold their hands up and cry that the Betas haven’t exactly “progressed” in the last six years, still playing the same venues to the same bewildered yet largely beguiled audience, but those of us indebted to the defensive skills of Michael Dawson will immediately draw their attention to the merits of latest album ‘Heroes To Zeroes’ – of which 10 of its 12 songs are aired tonight – as a startling reminder of why the Beta Band are such an important, nee vital cog in the revitalised machinery of British music.
See, if there was no Beta Band with their exquisite sub-baggy, pontificating shanties deconstructing all from Slim Whitman to the Happy Mondays and beyond, there would be no Coral, no Zutons, and possibly no other sub-generic tribe of outcasts existing beyond the realms of all things retro and errrm... Jet.
When Steve Mason introduces ‘Inner Meet Me’ as “THAT song off the second EP that starts nowhere and ends somewhere else” before segueing into a plaintive rendition of ‘Squares’ that renders I-Monster’s trip-happy alternative version to a mere supporting role.
Tonight is the first night of the tour, which also happens to be keyboard player John MacLean’s birthday, and despite his bashful efforts to remain staid and lonesome behind his extensive speaker stack, Mason and bassist Richard Green lure him out to a furtive chorus of ‘Happy Birthday’ which is usurped only by the sampled dogs barking joyfully on forthcoming single ‘Out-Side’.
Despite the absence of perennial favourite ‘Dry The Rain’, the Beta Band have an almost endless supply of new material which leaves the past truly dead and buried – something which is never more obvious in the fact that NOTHING from their first album is included in tonight’s set – and the fact that they seemingly have no wish to succumb to the pressures of the fashionista be it past, present or future means their worth as Britain’s most backwards-glancing forward-thinkers remains firmly intact.
JockeySlut [direct link]
Reviewer: Rich Sutcliffe
Rating: n/a
Band On The Run
‘Immediate’ is not a word you would generally associate with The Beta Band. The melody-rich, psychedelic repetitiveness of their early EPs didn’t exactly grab the listener and shake them into submission. Rather, their folksy-electronica wormed its way gently into one’s psyche until its genius became unavoidable. Equally, the trajectory of their success can hardly be described as meteoric - although cunningly sidestepping Difficult Second Album (‘Hot Shots II’) Syndrome by releasing a crap first one (‘The Beta Band’) didn’t help.
It’s hardly surprising, then, that tonight the band take to the stage with a discernible lack of urgency. It’s been almost two years since they last toured and on this, the first date of a string of UK appearances, the band are taking a little time to regain the majestic flow synonymous with their shows. Their trademark instrument switching appears a little clumsy, exaggerated perhaps by the sheer amount of gear crammed onto The Leadmill’s not inconsiderable stage.
It’s not until third track ‘Assessment’ that The Beta Band begin to show glimmers of what they are really capable of. The song’s Simple Minds-esque opening riff cuts through the crowd and by the time it hits the kind of rocking guitar break any self-styled garage band would be proud of the nodding heads have become a veritable seething mass. Yes, they’re only head-nodding, but the stakes have at least been raised.
While maintaining their casual demeanour, the band begin to cook, blasting through a set made up of a majority of tracks from new album ‘Heroes To Zeros’ with a sprinkling of old favourites. “This one’s got a really hard guitar solo,” announces frontman Steve Mason. “Watch and learn.”
By set closers ‘Liquid Bird’ and ‘Quiet’, shirts are off, drums are rattling and The Beta Band are once again reminding the audience exactly why they deserve such a place in their affections. Encores follow and with them the feeling that The Beta Band are far from their creative peak. Slow starters they may be, but on tonight’s evidence good things really do come to those who wait.
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