It’s Not Too Beautiful

In case you missed it, last week there was an excellent review of The Beta Band's gig at Manchester Apollo courtesy of Swiss Adam at Bagging Area. 

 

I tried to get tickets for their Bristol show on the day of release, but I didn't even get a sniff as they were sold out in record time. A shame, as I didn't get to see them live first time around. Here's hoping the success of the reunion tour, currently working it's way through the USA, Canada and Japan, will inspire a return to the UK for a second go round.

In the meantime, I've unearthed a post from the old blog, posted on 31st October 2005, a review of their posthumous 2CD collection Music: The Best Of The Beta Band / Live At The Shepherds Bush Empire, released earlier that month.

To mark the 20th anniversary of that post (nearly), I'm representing it here, accompanied by some visual selections from the Tube of You. Enjoy!

Discovering The Beta Band early on, through 1998’s EPs The Patty Patty Sound and Los Amigos Del Beta Bandidos, I was immediately drawn to their strange mix of REM-esque obtuse lyrics, latter period Talk Talk atmospherics, and a dislocated dance sensibility. 

The Three EP’s, which collected these plus first release Champion Versions, remains one of my favourite records. For some reason, I never bought the ‘proper’ albums that followed, possibly because the reviews and infrequently heard singles fuelled my suspicion that The Beta Band had set a standard that they could never quite match. 

And so, does this posthumous collection set the record straight, so to speak? 

Well… not really. Compiled chronologically by album, unsurprisingly the four selections from The Three EP’s excite the most. Opener Dry The Rain is a particular standout, exposed to a wider audience through the film High Fidelity and sadly not the massive breakthrough for the band that it should have been. 

1999’s It’s Not Too Beautiful, whilst ambitious, awkwardly shoehorns in admittedly epic-sounding samples from Disney movie The Black Hole. There are momentary flashes of inspiration in 2001’s Squares and Human Being, plus Easy and Troubles from 2004 swansong Heroes To Zeros. However, there’s a sense that The Beta Band were becoming increasingly demotivated by their lack of success, hardly surprising given the consistency of their material. 

That said, the accompanying live CD recorded on their farewell tour portrays an energised band. Again, The Three EP’s is well represented with six songs, including a rousing, uptempo version of Dr Baker and closing with Dog’s Got A Bone and The House Song. 

I’d still recommend The Three EP’s as an ideal primer, but Music is a worthy retrospective, especially if you can get hold of the limited 2CD version.

in 2025, with the benefit of experiencing The Beta Band's 'proper' (sic) albums and what came after (with another nod to Swiss Adam and his recent companion mix, Forty Five Minutes Of Beyond The Beta Band), I'd revise my recommendation slightly. 

If you like the first song that you hear by The Beta Band, then it's worth taking the plunge and getting hold of everything you can. Yes, The Three EP's is superb, but Hot Shots II and Heroes To Zeros would be enviable entries in any band's catalogue.

And the additional live CD with the Music 'best of', recorded at the Shepherds Bush Empire in London on 29th November 2004, a week before The Beta Band's farewell gig in Glasgow, is worth the purchase price alone even you have everything on CD1.

1) Dry The Rain (Live @ the Roundhouse, London, 2nd October 2025)

2) Inner Meet Me (Live @ Glastonbury, 25th June 2000)

3) Smiling (Official Video) (1999)

4) Squares (Official Video) (2002)

5) Broke (Live @ Later...With Jools Holland, 16th November 2001)

6) Assessment (Official Video) (2004)

7) Simple (Official Video) (2004)