"I tried to do my own thing," Beta Band vocalist Steve Mason sings late on the group's new album. "But the trouble with your own thing is, you end up on your own." That glum assessment and Heroes To Zeros' self-deprecating title could signal an artistic retreat for the determinedly eccentric Scotsmen, but the album doesn't really bear out that suggestion. Then again, it's hard to imagine a CD that opens with a burst of U2-inspired guitar, and closes with a series of bloops and the band riding a snare drum, sounding like a retreat of any kind.
The Beta Band had one of its best moments immortalized in High Fidelity, when John Cusack stirred up a crowded record store with the early single "Dry The Rain." Since then, The Beta Band has fostered a reputation for unpredictability (even turning out an unpredictable flop of a first album), but with its weird blend of modernized psychedelia, sonic sweep, and oblique but sincere emotions, that song contained the genetic material for what was to come.
Heroes To Zeros builds on 2001's Hot Shots II, letting the band find a balance between pop snap and infinite drone. As much chanted as sung, "Space" keeps threatening to fall apart or lapse into silence, but only grows more hypnotic as it goes along. "Assessment," which builds on what sounds like a guest appearance from The Edge, gives the group one of its most indelible, accessible moments, in a track that owes more to a club's tension and release than to the verse-chorus-verse structure of a classic 45.
The Beta Band has learned that repetition can yield its own kind of insight. On "Space Beatle," Mason keeps repeating the same phrase ("love you to pieces") until it starts to take on a different meaning with each occurrence—unless it means nothing at all. Six years into its recording career, The Beta Band remains as enigmatic as ever, sounding like future-pop on one track, an alternate-universe jam band on the next. It's difficult to get a handle on what the group is, but tough to deny that it's always doing its own thing. As long as there are listeners with an ear for adventure, The Beta Band seems unlikely to end up on its own.