The result is that Beta Love, while clearly a move away from the precise chamber pop of 2010's Orchard, is still an immediately infectious, harmonically intriguing album that subtly incorporates Zeller's classically trained violin chops into an even more unified band sound.
As much as the other guys diversify the sound, nothing crystallizes Ra Ra Riot better than Zeller’s angelic string parts.
The feeling on Beta Love is of a humble indie band transforming into more of an arena-ready indie pop act.
The brasher tracks on Beta Love come across as cathartic, as though the band is doing a silly dance or yelling obscenities as a necessary release from a stagnant situation.
Whether they're impatient for the mass audience of a bigger, louder band like fun. or just suffering a crisis of confidence, the slimmed-down quartet no longer trust their own material on Beta Love.
For an album that embraces the theme of technology, Beta Love sounds stuck in the past, belonging to an era in which the novelty of overusing the synthesizer has not yet worn off.
It lacks the heart that made The Orchard such a rewarding listen, and with its tacky electro-pop sound may lead them to becoming more indistinguishable than they might have been accused of being before.
The album is big, busy, and mainstream-friendly—ideal for a marketplace dominated by the likes of Fun., Gotye, Passion Pit, and Carly Rae Jepsen.
While a new direction could have worked out in five-piece’s favor, the change goes too far and the songs can’t back it up.
This is a confused mess of a record, with nonsensical lyrics, trite musical clichés, and not a lot else.
Beta Love goes for broke on the dance floor, but in their hurry to get there, Ra Ra Riot bypass both the head and the heart.
Oh gosh, I don't know where to begin. They had something going on their first two albums, and then they scrapped everything that was good about them for their least interesting and least unique quality: the synthesizer. Even if I weren't so betrayed by this change, I still wouldn't like this album. The hooks are annoying, the production and song writing is lazy, and the melodies and instrumentation are nonexistent. None of the songs come close to hitting 4 minutes in length, which I suppose is ... read more