Last year's Three EPs presented the Beta Band in a predictably diluted form; it was a compilation of EPs, after all, and therefore bereft of the cohesive structure that characterizes more deliberate albums. The Beta Band, however, has no such limitations. It has freed the Beta Band to be thoroughly, undeniably, aggressively weird. Think of them as mad scientists, splicing material from a vast array of genres, building a misshapen, shambling creature from whatever parts come to hand. However, in a break with cliché, the Beta Band's monster isn't going to turn around and eat the Beta Band; instead, it's going to burrow its way into your head and build a little nest among your favorite sounds. That's why you might suddenly find yourself craving shambling folk songs that evolve into Beckish folk-hop ("The Beta Band Rap"), muffled new-wave plinking ("Dance-o'er-the-border"), blearily psychedelic trip-hop ("Smiling") and pop songs with big wodges of orchestral soundtrackishness shoehorned into them ("It's Not Too Beautiful"). The wrong-headed pop brilliance of "Brokenupadingdong" and the genre-jumping ebullience of "The Hard One" will sand the shiny bits off your cerebral cortex, while "The Cow's Wrong" is the song most schizophrenics constantly hear in their heads. If Pink Floyd (circa Piper at the Gates of Dawn) came to your house, consumed everything in the drinks, medicine and cleaning supplies cabinets and then sat down with the Dust Brothers for a recording session on a fire-damaged four-track they'd found in a pond behind a nuclear power plant, they might sound like this. How fortunate for your sanity and your furniture that you need merely acquire The Beta Band, rather than go through all that!