The Beta Band live at Bristol O2 Academy: Gig Review

Live4ever 1 October, 2025

Press photo of The Beta Band by Neil Thomson

The Beta Band by Neil Thomson

4 starss

21 years after calling it quits, The Beta Band re-emerged not with bombast or sentimentality but with the same eclecticism that made them cult heroes.

In a year of blockbuster reunions (Oasis, The Maccabees etc), The Beta Band‘s return has flown curiously under the radar.

Yet one suspects that suits them just fine; Steve Mason and his cohorts have always thrived on being the outsiders, yet in the late 1990s they were perhaps indie’s most influential outfit.

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21 years after calling it quits, they’ve re-emerged not with bombast or sentimentality but with the same eclecticism that made them cult heroes.

The night begins with a 10-minute intro film made up of spliced camcorder footage, including a parody of THAT scene from High Fidelity and even an appearance from Mani.

Then the four musicians wander on stage to Bowie’s Memory Of A Free Festival, dressed in boilersuits, surrounded by foliage and with enough percussion instruments to stock a music shop.

They open with Inner Meet Me, its looped acoustic shuffle coaxing the crowd in gently. The welcome is rapturous but brief, as if both audience and band are easing back into this peculiar world they once shared.

However, by the time She’s the One blooms into life the room is locked into the familiar Beta Band groove.

It begins as springy aboriginal rock before mutating into a neo-acoustic rave, Mason drifting from tambourine to bongos while John Maclean juggles mouth harp, scratching and other percussion.

It’s Not Too Beautiful (from 1999’s The Beta Band) starts with echoes of The Stone Roses’ Bye Bye Badman before morphing into its own psychedelic journey, but otherwise the setlist leans heavily on The Three EPs, their 1998 statement release.

Push It Out is delicate and moving, Mason’s pleading vocal finally breaking through the dense haze of rhythm before he sinks into his bongos.

Assessment, the sole cut from 2004’s Heroes To Zeroes, provides swagger with its militaristic drums and Stonesy strut, proving that the band can ‘rock should they feel inclined.

Unfortunately, through no fault of their own, the sound cuts out twice, once during B + A – cutting off the wah-wah wigout in its prime – and again during Broke, interrupting its trip-hop murkiness.

Gamely, The Beta band keep playing, indifferent to the disturbance, with no inch of hissy fit in sight.

Indeed, the interruption during B + A arrives just as the set is taking flight. The euphoric mass singalong of Dry The Rain is so loud that the band wait for the crowd to finish before moving on (which one suspects has already become a feature of the tour), while the Gunter Kallmann Chor-sampling Squares gets a similar reaction during the encore.

Best of all is riotous closer The House Song, where Robin Jones is joined on drums by Mason, the duo stopping and starting in rhythmic bursts to end the set, samba-style.

Visually it’s a treat too: psychedelic lights, strange projections and the endearingly DIY aesthetic Maclean (a filmmaker by trade) revels in.

The consistent mid-song instrument swapping and juggling of samples exemplifies four multi-instrumentalists brilliantly recreating their densely layered studio sound.

While the songs are old, there is little nostalgia; The Beta Band still defy classification and are ahead of their time.

Folk, psychedelia, funk, dub, hip hop and rock bleed together in a patchwork that shouldn’t work but somehow does, to a transcendental level at points.

The Beta Band’s reunion might not make the headlines, but for those who know it feels like being let back into that secret club that never should have closed.

Richard Bowes

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