Beta Be Good

I really loved The Beta Band. There was something magically eccentric, familiarly peculiar and British about their curious fusion of sounds. I remember watching the video for ‘Inner Meet Me’, taken from ‘The Patty Patty Sound EP’ for the first time, and I recall feeling instantly captivated with this bunch of surreal Scotsmen – slightly disturbed by all the deranged cardboard masks and beetle-like men clambering over misty hills - but totally captivated none the less.

I tried to suckle up the albums they’d released so far, discovering the bizarre, minimalist trip-hop infused indie weirdness of their eponymous debut, before falling for the delicate profundity and brash left-field pop on their follow-up ‘Hot Shots II’. When The Beta Band returned with ‘Heroes To Zeros’, in particular the triumphant and euphoric single ‘Assessment’, they had fully nestled into their folktronica magnificence and were making elative indie hits that didn’t get (too) lost on particularly odd tangents. Well, that’s what I thought - The Beta Band shortly broke up, leaving me weeping into my sporran.

I can’t say I fully enveloped myself in the same way with any of the band’s side-projects. Steve Mason’s King Biscuit Time and Black Affair could be fairly magical at times, in very different ways, but it felt like the singer hadn’t fully come into his own, shaken off his solo artist inhibitions. And Gordon Anderson and John Maclean’s The Aliens wasn’t really up my tree.

What I’m trying to get round saying is, Steve Mason’s made a brilliant solo album, and I can’t stop listening to it. Produced by Richard X, ‘Boys Outside’ is a raw insight into Mason’s state of mind. Claiming on his website that the tracks on ‘Boys Outside’ are the “best songs I’ve ever written”, it seems to me that Mason has finally found his feet in the solo world. In the cripplingly stirring indie ballad, ‘The Letter’, Mason strips down his surrealist guise and solemnly declares, “Could it be that you don’t love me anymore?” over soaring strings – it’s the most fully formed and heartfelt song Mason’s ever put his name to. And if we’re on the subject of heartfelt, the album is full of tender, tortuous declarations, with the almost – don’t let this put you off it – ‘Lady In Red’-styled title track. Then there’s ‘I Let Her In’, which we strictly advise you never listen to if nursing a broken heart. This song will kill you.

It’s not all doom and gloom (although we assume Mason has had quite a soul destroying heartache whilst making this album), up-tempo grooves and Beta Band-esque percussion feature on ‘Am I Just A Man’ and ‘Understand My Heart’, whilst the politically-orientated urgency of ‘Stress Position’ is a thrillingly dark and direct composition.

It’s a stunning, tender and exposing set of songs, laying the singer’s battered heart onto a tray and offering it up to our overwhelmed ears in the most painful yet palatable way only he possibly could. 

Thank you Steve!