The Beta Band is one of those cool artsy bands and if you like them then you must be pretty "cool" too. At gigs -- which are always attended by stacks of graphic designers, artists and French people -- home videos are played of band members doing really weird stuff like eating birthday cakes and falling over drunk. Totally cool. They even constantly swap their instruments, so one minute the drummer is the guitarist who is the bassist who is the keyboardist and so on. Even cooler.
But coolness can only take you so far. You also need good tunes. And after releasing three brilliant EPs, which were collected on one must-get CD called, unpretentiously, "The Three EPs," The Beta Band was hailed as the saviors of rock music by perfectly blending beautiful melodies with weird bursts of psychedelica to give it an experimental edge. But then the much-hyped self-titled debut studio album pretty much sucked. Even the band, in interviews to promote it, called the record "crap." Now that is rare honesty in the music business. Dead bloody cool.
With their second album "Hot Shots II" (they're undoubtedly taking the piss out of themselves after their debut bombed) The Beta Band knew they were in danger of slipping from "coolness" into complete obscurity. While the debut was blustery, arrogant and directionless, an experiment that backfired and should have been brushed under the carpet, "Hot Shots II" is majorly introverted.