concept". Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone said the band "layer warped voices, pastoral guitars and random sound effects over slow-motion loops to evoke a chance meeting between King Crimson circa 1969 and Happy Mondays circa 1989", highlighting "The Cow's Wrong". 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." He stated that the band is "still lost in sound, but oriented enough here to make tunes out of it." Writing several months after the release of The Beta Band, Tom Ewing of Freaky Trigger called it "the most troublesome album of 1999," highlighting how "its makers disown it, its few disciples adore it, a whole lot of people hate it, and a whole lot more like me just don't know what to make of it, but keep playing it anyway. While there are certainly good bits and bad bits on The Beta Band, it’s not always possible to work out which is which, let alone pull them apart. And the funny thing is that after a few months you stop caring and just take the whole damn lot as it comes." At the end of 1999, The Beta Band was ranked in several publications' lists of the year's best albums; Intro named it 9th, Mojo named it the 10th, Rockdelux named it the 26th, Muzik named it the 27th, and NME named it the 36th. In a retrospective review, AllMusic critic Jason Ankeny thought that the album "constantly runs the risk of collapsing into complete self-indulgence." Nevertheless, Ankeny further stated: " In its way the Beta Band's genius is their wanton disregard for niceties like verses, choruses, and melodies; rejecting musical theory in favor of the chaos theory, the album's neither a masterpiece nor a mess, but both." Miles Bowe of Stereogum have conceded no less that "everyone knew that the record was rushed, and that maybe the band didn’t have enough time to fully develop the songs or lyrics as much," while also noting that "people tend to forget that The Beta Band is not 'fucking awful' — it’s actually pretty fucking great." Legacy In retrospect, The Beta Band has been re-assessed by some critics and considered underrated. Writing in 2005, Jess Harvell of Pitchfork felt the band were neglected by critics and said "there's not a single