Beta Male could have been cool. Born in 2005 as a shadowy, introspective one-man concept-band in the bedroom studio of Indianapolis music veteran P. David Hazel, that first EP, ".does the wash." could have passed muster with even the smuggest music snob. But things went awry in 2007 when Hazel enlisted the help of schemers Jess Hack and Allison Hazel [both flamboyantly (un)dressed and conspicuously lacking any previous musical experience before picking up keys and bass, respectively, for the band] to flesh out his creation and bring it to stage. All of a sudden this obscure solo project in the vein of Psychadelic Furs and Joy Division evolved into a curious new wave sex-rock spectacle described by Indianapolis' NUVO Newsweekly as "David Bowie meets George Michael in a space-age band of lunatics that just might burn down a club someday".
In 2008, Hazel added staid journeyman-guitarist T.J. Briggs and off they went. Austere, shoe-gazing haters be damned, Beta Male quickly gained a reputation for "challenging gender role expectations in the music industry with debauched, charismatic, irresistible, confident, new/third wave music that is both authentic AND wildly infectious" (Laundromatinee.com) and prompting the popular music blog to muse that it's "possible for a post-pubescent Le Tigre to emerge from the Ranch in Indianapolis." Eric Weddle of Secretly Canadian wrote, "Completely of this time, no throwback, Beta Male creates music for the curious, the reprobates and revolutionaries."
With a history of nude house shows, interpretive hula hoop performances, and on- and off-stage theatrics (the women of Beta Male have been known to have themselves "delivered" to stage as sex dolls in a shipping crate and even showed up at an event in burqas to stick it to the naysayers) it may have been easy to overlook the fact that this little-band-that-could is actually, well, good.
Until now. In February 2011, Beta Male released a long-awaited self-titled debut album of personal pleas, internal dialogues, wry examinations, and desperate/hopeful imaginings described by Indianapolis Metromix as "seductive, salacious, and spooky". Recorded, produced and mixed in the band's home studio and mastered Paul MKS Mahern (The Fray, John Mellencamp), the record illuminates the band's progressive pop experimentation while remaining fiercely loyal to the moody vestiges of Hazel's earlier solo work examining the human condition, its contradictions, the struggle between the external and internal, controlling and being controlled, and our constant confrontations with our own "beta male"--the man behind the man. "Beta Male" reflects the borderline personality of a band that claims its sexuality while impugning sexism, bears its soul while wearing a mask, and asserts its independence, but begs you not to leave.
