Based more around beat and rhythm than prior releases, the numerous different styles and influences incorporated into The Beta Band include psychedelia, hip hop and blues.

Upon its release, the band made their dissatisfaction with the album public, infamously calling it "fucking awful",[1] largely blaming time constraints.

In 2018, as part of a reissue campaign of the band's discography, Because Music re-released the album alongside the intended bonus disc.

[6] According to writer Ted Hedrickson, the band – consisting of multi-instrumentalists Steve Mason, Robin Jones, Richard Greentree and John MacLean – fused musical elements like ambient drones, trip hop beats and Pink Floyd-style introspective balladry to create their unique sound throughout their EPs, and that these releases "served as a fabulous taster for the band's self-titled debut.

"[7] By the time of The Beta Band, the group had undergone a successful, quick American tour while having become known in Britain for their live performances.

[7] Their gigs typically featured films, a DJ set that they would perform before the show, and quirky on-stage sampling from Mclean.

"[7]According to Steve Taylor in The A to X of Alternative Music, none of the songs were prepared before the band entered the studio, which is where they were "determined to keep their manual looping techniques".

[11] In one of their attempts to "make something out of nothing",[9] the band had originally intended the album to contain a bonus disc of two long-form ambient pieces, "Happiness and Colour" and "The Hut", both of which lasted over 20 minutes and represented the band's desire to "make a record of sound as a description for something like happiness, where a distinct first part gives way to a distinct second part".

"[9] Nonetheless, this decision came several weeks after the band's record label had already included the ambient disc with promotional copies of the album distributed to various people in the music industry.

[14] "The Beta Band swerves crazily from Wagnerian drama ('It's Not So Beautiful') to futurist country-rock ('Broken Up Like a Ding-Dong'), with detours into prog-rock, proto-hip-hop and ambient dub."

"[8] Ankeny, describing the styles, said: "Pop, blues, folk, psychedelia, hip-hop -- they're all here, sometimes even colliding within the same song; the disc somehow sounds almost completely different with each successive listen, consistently revealing new layers and possibilities.”[15] The ten songs on the album rely on a snippet of melody, often sung and played on acoustic guitar by Steve Mason, but surrounding his voice are not only guitars or drums but many other, more unusual instruments and techniques, including samples, xylophones, sleigh bells, hand claps, spoons, and a diversity of bird whistles, including a cuckoo,[8] with its songs integrating numerous tape loops and offbeat breakbeats into what writer Ron Hart called the album's "ambient classic rock jams and textured pop melodies".

[8] He also felt the record was both a conscious and natural effort, adding "it's just something we all really wanted to do",[7] while Greentree himself described the album as "like a bird without all the fleshy bits and feathers.

[9] It was described by writer Stuart Berman as "actually equal parts barbershop-quartet serenade, proto-'Lazy Sunday' faux b-boy braggadocio, and Elvis pelvis thrusts.

[1] "The Beta Band were always headstrong, and here you see them chasing their own tails in wild-eyed delight, summoning all the fires of the forest and the scattered stars in the sky to cast light on their studio jams."

[18] He blends simple thoughts about drinking and dinner with travel fantasies about pyramids, opinions on the Beach Boys' Wild Honey and "moments of deep awkwardness".

[18] A jam of both organic and electronic elements, "Dance O'er the Border" is heavy on repetition and percussion and lacks a melody for the first four minutes, while featuring lyrics that forgo verses, choruses and rhyming in favour of Mason spoken, stream-of-consciousness comments.

[18] "Brokenupadingdong" and "Smiling" were compared to Julian Cope by writer Tom Ewing, who described them as "ramshackle campfire clapalong jams with a powerful communal momentum" that partly recall Amon Duul I, Can and late 1980s British house music.

[19] Between them is "Number 15", a frustrated song with an emphasis on dance music and unusual choral refrains,[1] alongside gamelan elements played with kitchen utensils.

[12] Prior to release, The Beta Band was played before an invite-only industry audience in a studio/bar in Shoreditch, London, which included Noel Gallagher and Verve guitarist Nick McCabe.

"[11] However, he did admit that some of the financial constraints led him to prevent the band's continental recording idea, but felt the album was "nowhere near as bad as they say", despite feeling it could have better.

[1] According to Pitchfork's Stuart Berman, the album "deflated the ballooning expectations surrounding the group in the wake of The Three EPs with all the elegance and subtlety of a whoopee cushion.

"[1] Among original reviews, Brent DiCrescenzo of Pitchfork hailed The Beta Band as a unique sounding album that was "so psychedelic, yet not excessively experimental.

"[34] Ron Hart, writing for CMJ New Music Monthly, was favourable, praising the album and how it turned "experimental dabblings" into a "fully realised concept".

[36] Robert Christgau of The Village Voice gave the album a three-star honourable mention rating, signifying "an enjoyable effort consumers attuned to its overriding aesthetic or individual vision may well treasure.

[40] In a retrospective review, AllMusic critic Jason Ankeny thought that the album "constantly runs the risk of collapsing into complete self-indulgence."

"[18] "The Beta Band stands as a time capsule of possibly the last instance when a group this strange could not just get signed to a major label, but use the company dime to make themselves sound even stranger."

"If the record violently vascillates between fascinating and frustrating on a song-by-song basis," he said, "its over-arching oddness retains its own peculiar allure.