Beta gets together one hot threesome

"Expansive rock" is almost an oxymoron. Usually, "expansive" should be read "prog," "operatic," or just plain "pretentious." But marketing wouldn't stand for that kind of truth in advertising, so you get meaningless phrases like "ambitious" or "musicians' musicians." "Forget that whole punk compression down 'n' dirty rock 'n' roll bit, this is High-Concept Art," these bands seem to say. Fortunately, the bigger the Concept, the more leaden the fall. Jam bands are exposed as drugged-out hippies, mathrockers as over-intellectualized fusioneers. Wankers, all of 'em, with nothing to say and plenty of notes with which to say it.

On The Three EPs, The Beta Band somehow manage to turn High-Concept Art into high-concept art. They make lots of tiny ideas cohere into three "expansive" EPs, collected on one album after inspiring bidding wars among collectors. It's a mosaic, with beautiful shards of music lending definition to compositions writ large.

This additive pastiche is most obvious on "Monolith," a 16-minute collage. It starts off with pseudo-Latin rhythms and bird chirps and moves into scrambled voices and organ drones. While most of the parts are disconnected, motifs do recur. The originality and brevity of each idea keeps the track from spiraling down into art-rock hell. How can you hate a song that honks at you?

It's this sleepy surrealism that defines The Beta Band's sound. Nearly inaudible lyrics suddenly jump out. "Spray on dust is the greatest thing." "Who could find him, the sidewinding Indian/ Why do they miss him, the overpaid simpleton?" And as soon as you get a hold on one line, it becomes the backing track, and Stephen Mason starts with another lyric on top. Melody becomes rhythm, rhythm, melody. "The House Song" has three lyric layers chasing each other at different speeds. On one level, it's a parody of techno's vocal loops; you can't explain the head-fuck of hearing "Yesterday I found a day/ I know today I found a day" play off "Put it in your pocket for a rainy day/ Sing a song and you know you're wrong now." Mason can drone and harmonize--he's like John Cale meeting the Whiffenpoofs for an overdubbed version of "Einstein on the Beach." Or some-
thing like that.

The layering produces a psychedelic effect. But it rarely sounds self-indulgent; each fragment is simple and directed. Mason drones like Yo La Tengo, finger-plucks like a weird Scottish bluesman, and fluidly transforms lead to rhythm and back. The dynamics shift constantly--suddenly everything will drop out but John McLean's rhythm scratching, and then the iron curtain of sound will drop again. None of the parts is particularly complicated, but it's not easy to arrange rock songs for 10 instruments (even if the band is four people--ah, the joys of multi-tracking).

Beta's funky too, something you can't say for Yes. The live drumming, the programming groove and Richard Greentree can play some ultra-fat bass. The only time the sound drags is on the third EP, which is too overbearing and mystical (please, guys, don't become Zeppelin). But the lo-fi beauty of the first EP, and the out-there collage of the second make this album a keeper. (Astralwerks)

--Sam Frank

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