Much Beta than the rest

Graham Reid
Elsewhere

BETA BAND


Beta Band


(Regal/EMI)



Difficult debut album time for this oddball lo-fi, folksy triphop London-based quartet whose compilation of EPs last year - The 3EPs - generated an unexpected but thoroughly deserved amount of praise in British and local press.

The 3EPs was a genre-defying collection of folksy-psychedelia and this similarly conceived album of styles thrown in the blender provides enough evidence to make you think it will be one of the slow creepers of the year and, as with 3EPs, will command an unnatural amount of turntable investigation.

Opening with a blurry doowop sample and stupid chantsong, The Beta Band Rap devolves into a loose-limbed Beasties-casual career synopsis ("this one's from Scotland, man") overlaid with monaural cheapskate rockabilly.

It's an attention-getter - and quite unlike their previous work - if nothing else.

Then things head into an unsettling Betaworld of hypno-psychedelic folk and turntables, angst-noir with quasi-chants, fragments of steel drum pop and some Eno-like piano minimalism. And, as before, they come with mesmerising and understated choruses.

The Beta Band effortless quote from their elders (the opening of It's Not Too Beautiful makes you think they've heard I Got You) and celebrate the ordinary (weirdly appropriate out of synch vocals about going for a drink with friends).

The Beta Band are clever but, on some of the lesser evidence here, not quite as clever as they think they are.

Try the essential 3EPs album before this much slower grower. But with either, a splendid time is guaranteed for all.

****


Three for the road



BLEY, PEACOCK, MOTIAN

Not Two, Not One


(ECM/Universal)


Long-standing ECM labelmates Paul Bley (piano), Gary Peacock (bass) and Paul Motian (drums) here essay their brand of minimal, considered but sometimes austere impressionistic improvisations over 11 tracks which follow a long arc from spare, slow pointillism through central tracks where the trio fully engage in musical conversations to more emotionally introspective pieces.

Most engaging tracks: the lightly swinging Fig Foot; the blue-tinged ballad Vocal Tracked and the tidal changes of mood in Noonsphere.

At its best there is as much sheer pleasure (Set Up Set) as fascinating intellectual interplay (the tender Don't You Know), but the whole is doubtless best appreciated by those who've sometimes explored these occasionally stark terrains previously.

****



Bitter sweet life


RENE GEYER


Sweet Life

(Mushroom/BMG)

Power-charged soulful Australian rock chanteuse Geyer is respected at a distance in this country, but much admired at home where she's considered a single minded, toughened interpreter of a song.

Lining up with her recently have been Paul Kelly and Joe (Zepp/Black Sorrows) Camilleri who co-produce this typically ambitious marriage of smooth edged soul and expansive, lyrically mature songs with Geyer's nail hard, often darkly charged delivery.

At times she takes on Dusty in Memphis territory, at others pure soul classic (she covers the Motown I'm Gonna Make You Love Me with CDB backing).

Back in Melbourne after almost a decade in the United States, here she has chosen mostly songs written by Australians, four each by her and Kelly, and an impressive roll call of Oz musicians.

On her own Heaven she mines an earthy world-wise soul ballad (lyrics which battle hardened Buddhist Tina Turner might consider), a synth reggae groove drives From Now On, and there are trancelike North African strings and dobro called up for Kelly's Play Me, on which he shares vocals.

There are some emotions-by-numbers, but towards the end there's a scary, threatening Killer Lover with scouring guitar by Beast of Bourbon/Johnnys Spencer P. Jones.

The standout is Kelly's You Broke a Beautiful Thing, a white soul song of such aching bittersweet regret that it stands as a career highlight for a woman who has had more than most already: "How could I be angry with a child ... it won't ever mend, thoughtless child all wrapped up in the shape of a man."

If you do nothing else, hear this track. It's a life lesson.

***


ALSO RAN


Albums dedicated to "the bliss of being" don't come by that often, so when they do ... Kip Mazuy's Elements of Ecstasy (Bliss) arrives with testimonials from a transpersonal psychotherapist in Melbourne, the founder and president of The Winters School of massage therapy training in Houston and a woman who has used Kip's music during childbirth. On the cover a marketing manager exclaims "there has never been new age/meditation music so exquisite full stop." Focused on your inner self? So here's your album of electronic ambience which opens with a rippling brook ("sample courtesy of Kit Watkins Q UP Arts.")

For New Orleans meets New Zealand (Jaz), Tauranga's Dr Jaz (aka Neil McKenzie, formerly Dr Jazz) here puts his banjo and faux-throaty vocals alongside clarinettist Tim Laughlin and his old-time New Orleans-style dixieland band. Populist stuff (Darktown Strutters Ball, Way Down Yonder in New Orleans, Ain't Misbehavin' etc.) and best considered a show souvenir - but highly disingenuous, if not dishonest, for these white folks to have an elderly black guitarist on the cover. Maybe he lives in New Orleans?

Melburnian Matt Corcoran proves he's a brittle, inventive blues slide player on Angry Young Man (Jayrem) which should appeal to Thorogood/Stevie Ray fans who aren't much troubled by his vocal inadequacies.

Various and varied women fill the ongoing Lilith Fair: A Celebration of Women in Music compilations (Arista). Volumes two and three include Sinead, Angelique Kidjo, Queen Latifah, Heather Nova, Sham Colvin, Bic Runga and others, all of whom appear to have gender, and not a lot else, in common. A primer if you've never heard a woman sing, perhaps? Pure product.