Have you ever tried to learn a hard rock or heavy metal song guitar, but you saw that the song was in drop D tuning? That is thanks to Helmet.
Betty is Helmet’s third album released in 1994. The album followed up the band’s sophomore effort Meantime which is known for it’s hard hitting syncopated rhythm, but Betty was a departure from this formula with it’s spacey songs, slower tempo, and it’s more exploratory songs.
The album starts out with the song “Wilma’s Rainbow” which follows with Helmet’s normal formula, but it does contain some exploratory writing. The lyrics of “Wilma’s Rainbow” seem to be quite relevant today about a person who has read a book and thinks that he’s great, but all he learned was very old advice. This can be compared to the explosion of “alpha male” content where gurus will tell people very basic advice and just steal money from them.
The second song, “I Know”, deviates significantly from what is typical of Helmet as the song is rather spacey and slower but still quite heavy. According to Page Hamilton from a Rolling Stone, the lyrics are about people forcing their beliefs down your throat article.
“Biscuits For Smut” is faster than “I Know”, but it’s still as spacey as the previous track, and Page Hamilton’s vocals are put through an effect that makes his singing rather psychedelic. The lyrics were inspired by a story that Hamilton’s grandfather told him where Page’s great-grandmother made biscuits, but they were over baked, so they were given to Page’s grandfather’s dog Smut. Hence the title “Biscuits For Smut”, but the song is actually about a serial killer.
The fourth song “Milquetoast” is very characteristic of Helmet except for the beginning where there is only bass guitar, drums, and Hamliton’s vocals put through “that Pink Floyd, A.M-radio effect,” but after this it’s back to the regular Helmet formula with some added weirdness. The lyrics of “Milquetoast” seem to be nonsense, and I can’t get any meaning out of them.
The song “Tic” sounds like it might have been off of Helmet’s previous effort, it’s more hard hitting goodness. The lyrics are about not wanting to deal with other people’s problems because we have our own.
“Rollo” is a song written by the bassist Henry Bogden and Hamilton, and it’s a fairly hard hitting song with some spaciness through vocal effects.
The song “Street Crab” is a slightly slower, more open sounding song with a heavy groove making it a overall a rather heavy song about the street crabs of New York which where seemed odd Hamilton.
“Clean” is very similar to “Rollo” in the fact it’s hard hittin, but it feels rather lethargic compared to some other tracks on the record. The lyrics of the song are about the decline of Hamilton’s life after the success of Helmet’s previous record “Meantime”.
The next two songs are “Vaccination”, which is more of what we’ve come to expect from “Betty” and “Beautiful Love”, which is a song from the 1930’s, but it has a funny story behind it where Hamilton tricked the bassist and drummer into doing free jazz by tell them to do stuff for a sound check, and then dubbed some other stuff over top of that.
“Speechless” is a rather calm song that has a very wide feeling that I find calming. The next song “The Silver Hawaiian” is a rather odd song that is bass driven with a funky feel and nonsense lyrics. “Overrated” is about feeling pathetic, and all I can say about the song is pretty in a sad manner.
The last song on the album is an odd ditty called “Sam Hell.” It was a song written in an apartment that was occupied by Big Joe Turner who Hamilton was a fan of. He recorded the song on a six string banjo.
Betty is a rather unique album that I find to be an appealing soundscape that really shows Helmet’s versatility as a band.
All quotes and information came from this Rolling Stone article: