Surprisingly, tonight is not a sell out. This wasn't expected, bearing in mind the massive cult popularity of The Beta Band, from whom Gordon Anderson was the founder and now the lead singer here, alongside Robin Jones and John Maclean who were both key BB members.
Still, we press on. Having heard the Alienoid Starmonica EP, it was a delightful euphonious 4 track bite-size music snackette, most impressive. So naturally I expected good things here tonight.
But I’m afraid it just wasn’t to be. Their style cannot be faulted, heavily influenced in the way of psychedelic infused plod rock to waves of acidic electronica. With the keyboard sounding like that of Ray Manzarek’s in places through the night, we initially thought we might be doffing our caps to their excellence.
Howevere, it soon became apparent the whole unit didn’t sound tight and efficient. In fact, they were somewhat off kilter at the best of times. Their 40 minute set landed somewhere between deep electric scuzz pancakes and heavy capsulated mogodon with some foot-tapping Pink Floyd-esque workouts and some Stones-y blues influences.
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Anderson, dressed in a great “Rockers” t-shirt and a gnarly ski hat(?) has not been blessed with the most lyrical or approachable of voices, but nevertheless he has charisma. Also, his band clearly have self belief. The song Robotman came on, and it was definitely akin to riding a psychedelic penny schmarthing down gack-fuzz lane, with great dancing to go with. Think Peter Crouch. A great track, one of the strongest on the night, but still nothing like the EP version.
The night left me a little deflated. Saying that, with the medley at the end which included a few lyrics from Primal Scream and Helter Skelter (the Beatles) and of course Robotman, the crowd did enjoy their efforts. In my view they need to play together a lot more, have a right good polish up to have any sort of resemblance to being from outer space.
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