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The assemblage of The Beta Band's EP's is sequenced chronologically, starting with first EP first song, and also the band's claim to fame, "Dry The Rain"****, a snippet of which was featured in the movie High Fidelity. Though song itself has a couple too many digressions its description in the movie's dialogue was apt, as the outro part that was featured is every bit as infectious and memorable as "na na na na Hey Jude!" was in its day. Over the course of the compilation only about half of the tracks could reasonably be considered "songs," the drowsy "Dog Got A Bone" being the other one of the first EP Champion Versions.
The Patty Patty Sound, the second EP, features "Inner Meet Me," a driving folk tune as energetic as the whole album gets, and "She's The One" which starts as a stream of consciousness folk-chant with a vintage late-60's Beatles meets Clapton pop-psychedelia outro for the second half.
More interesting is the third EP Los Amigos del Beta Bandidos. "Push It Out" and "It's Over" are moodier than most of the other tracks, the latter a jazzy, seemingly stream of consciousness folk-chant about a "sidewinding Indian." The album's centerpiece is the contemplative "Dr. Baker"****, a tongue in cheek tale of misery sung by a choir of Steve Masons accompanied only by minimal piano but with cathedral echo. The EP ends with "Needles In My Eyes"****, the album's most traditionally structured song, with a slow Beatles meets Pink Floyd organ.
The rest of the tracks are trippy electronic grooves, either with a simple jingle-phrase or no lyrics at all. As I've seen mentioned, all the tracks have a "great sense of space" and sound great as background music but most don't warrant much investment beyond that, especially as over half are over 6-minutes ("Monolith" is almost 16-minutes of sound collage noodling).
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