By snoadmin
VHS or Beta is a band of pampered musicians.
There is no way of defining its sound. It is neither specifically rock nor dance or electronic or house. Maybe the band fuses one or two of those together or take it to another level, as in to say it’s “dance-punk” or “French house” or “electroclash.” But to say it’s creating exclusively one genre isn’t what the band is all about.
You’re not sure whether to react with a cool “cowabunga” or put on your black tights like Lindsay Lohan, all while thickening those layers of metallic eye shadow and fixing a headband over the brows.
You’re not sure whether to be over-the-top and revealing, or demure and at a sunset with an acoustic guitar singing to the birds.
Over-the-top is the perfect way to describe VHS or Beta’s 2002 debut album “Le Funk,” on which the boys got heavy with defining their sound as modern-day disco daddies: dance rock with heavy synth guitar and keyboards.
As they moved forward, the question on how to define their music became more difficult to answer.
Is it like a perplexing Picasso painting you’re getting in shapes of hallucinatory nine-minute instrumentals (like in “Irreversible,” from the band’s 2004 release “Night on Fire”)?
Or is it a Vija Celmins painting you’re getting through music – all starry, quixotic and mysterious – as in tracks like “The Stars Where We Come From” and “Time Stands Still” (both from VHS or Beta’s most recent release, “Bring on the Comets”)? On “We Can Be One,” the band even turns glittery, with beats reminiscent of Madonna’s “Lucky Star.”
So, what they think they sound like?
“Whenever people randomly ask us that, like when we’re at the airport, [in hillbilly voice] ‘Yo, Sam, what kind of music do you play?’ I just say, like, dancey-rock-and-roll, because it’s very rock, but still very dancey,” explained Craig Pfunder, the band’s guitarist, singer and lyricist.
“When I wrote ‘Comets,’ it was meant to have the feel where it didn’t feel bound down to one genre, per se,” he said. “I didn’t want to put out a new ’80s dance record or something that felt one way.”
However you slice the cake, VHS or Beta has been developing a music collection that’s hard to define. In this notion, the band burst onward with an expansion of sounds that cannot be boxed.
If there’s one place on Earth that appreciates the music, whether the intention’s to be serious or playful, it’s definitely Los Angeles, which got its dose of the band when it dropped in for a show at the El Rey on Sunday.
The six-piece band (for now) has been dotting the rest of the country, showing off its deliciously catchy tracks from “Bring on the Comets.” And although the majority of the songs are lighthearted, it’s more or less a part of the band’s overarching plan to lure in the world. (That does include hearing its songs on video games in the near future.)
On the band’s website, Pfunder said, “Early on, I asked myself, ‘Do I want to make records for one group of people, or do I want to write songs for the rest of the world?'”
It looks like the world is winning.
Over the band’s 10 years of existence, the lineup has changed since it first tried to make a name for itself in Louisville, Ky. Yet the core members (Pfunder, drummer Mark Guidry and bassist Mark Palgy) have stuck it out, and that drive to not repeat themselves cruises on.
They go on, pampered, because creatively VHS or Beta can exist in a timeless autonomous realm where its music has no date (don’t let its obsolete video format-referencing name fool you) and the band has no obligation to make a certain kind of easily classifiable music.
