"The Beta Band apple has over-ripened and become riddled with maggots. It must fall from the tree and let its seeds return to the ground." With this gnomic remark, The Beta Band announced earlier this year that they were calling it a day.
The Anglo-Scottish quartet, one of the UK's most singular bands, were apparently frustrated at not translating critical acclaim into commercial success. They ended their farewell tour in London, playing a set of songs whose charm was tinged with reproach and regret. It was an "I coulda been a contender" kind of night.
When the audience took over singing the chorus on their greatest song, "Dry the Rain", a sort of upbeat descendant of "Sympathy for the Devil", it seemed mystifying that they had not sold a lot more records. (It is on the soundtrack to the film version of High Fidelity, in a scene when Rob, the nerdish record-shop owner, wins a bet with his colleagues that he can sell five copies of a Beta Band album by playing it.)
In the end, though, their failure to crack the mainstream was not so mysterious. As they showed in 1999 when they denounced their much-hyped debut album as "awful" and warned fans not to buy it, they were stubborn to the point of self-destructiveness. Also, their music's busy-ness, its unpredictable ricocheting between rock, folk, Beatlesy psychedelia, hip-hop, krautrock and much else, was an almost too vehement illustration of their independent-mindedness.
On stage they looked unprepossessing, in shirts and ties, as if they had popped in from a nearby office. Their way of sharing countless different instruments between them, including a melodica, a Jew's harp and many different types of percussion, was impressive evidence of musicianship but also conferred a sort of collective anonymity on them.
The songs, however, were multi-hued and full of life. Like Beck, The Beta Band combined catchy melodies with musical eccentricity, with the odd self-indulgent jam thrown in for good measure. They ended with all four band members drumming at two drum kits, going out with a bang not a whimper. Tel 0870 771 2000
