"Ladies and Gentleman, let me introduce what has to be the best band in the world", spews the over-excited and possibly erect compere.
In terms of a build-up, it's asking rather a ridiculous amount of anyone, let alone the Beta Band. But, of course, we are just mere mortals placed against a group used to meeting, and, equally, defying expectations at the flick of a switch.
This show, in a virtual broom cupboard in London's East End, is a fitting and, perhaps surprisingly, eloquent gesture from the head-twisted Scottish rock royalty. A fan club only XFM show, barely more than a couple of hundred are about to be given a serious ear and eye investigation.
The elaborately decorated venue, balloons hugging the ceiling and technicolour circular spirals decking the stage, exudes celebration and is a far cry from the grumpy shrug of a band who briefly engaged the Brixton Fridge earlier this year.
As previously stated though, expectations and delivery are a random process in the Beta Band's world. However, tonight we understandably get just one track from the self-titled debut long-player, which they lambasted on release as "shit". Hot shit would be an appropriate description of that track this evening, 'It's Not Too Beautiful''s dramatic orchestral swirls tormenting Steve Mason's chiming guitar, and setting the show off in exactly the right fashion.
Resolutely cocky yet terminally aloof, the Beta Band (and their audience) have had no such reservations about phase one and phase three of the group's canon, namely 'The Three EPs' and the recently released 'Hot Shots II'.
And the evidence is here for the lucky few time and again. From the latter long-player, aborted single 'Squares' creeps into life, flowering into a swollen, cinematic thrill, the threat to "break" in 'Human Being' is delivered amid a storm of explosive percussion and jubilant rhythms, while 'Quiet' literally takes-off mid-section, a shredding, guitar helicopter piloted by a trumpet. Yeah, you had to be there, and that's saying nothing for the awesome 'Alleged', 'Al Sharp' and 'Life'.
Elsewhere, earlier material still sounds like some of the greatest psychedelic guitar music ever recorded, illuminating the obvious distinction between the Beta Band then and now: stretched and whacked-out experimentation against concise, complex but controlled pop magnificence.
'Inner Meet Me', 'House Song' and a barrelling, urgent 'Dr Baker' are frazzled, heavily layered adventures, soaked in sound and invention, while 'She's The One' builds to a colossal conclusion of frightening might and style. Jokes are even cracked and a brief Q&A session offered to the goggle-eyed crowd, who respond with brilliant ineptness.
With such an embarrassment of riches - a transcendent 'Broke', tones bursting every which way, and an almost illegal 'Dry The Rain' close the show - it's easy to make glib, rush-of-blood assessments about this group, who can surely only continue to reach higher and further than virtually all of their peers in the coming years.
Best band in the world? Well, on this form, nobody does it beta.
