Random Record Review: SBB - Karlstad Live (2001)

SBB - Karlstadt Live (2001; recorded 1975)
This is a fantastic live album by a band I don't much care for. Yes, on paper, Polish '70s progressive rockers SBB sound like the kind of guys I'd get along with: top-notch musicianship, extended improvisation and innumerable live archive releases in which no song is played the same way twice. But they never quite held my interest, focusing too much on meandering keyboard and vocal parts while never quite matching the ambition of their more intricate instrumental passages.

A recording from SBB's first tour of Scandinavia in 1975, this album finds the group in a state of apparent transition, carving a space somewhere between the rough, blues-influenced hard rock of the early '70s and the kind of menacing jazz-rock jams favored on the band's contemporaneous albums. Guitarist Apostolis Anthimos' McLaughlin-esque guitar flourishes are now pushed to the forefront, and the music is all the better for it. When his rapid clusters of fuzzed-up phrases spray over the the slow boil of the band's ominous two-chord vamps, the effect is nothing less than intoxicating. Even bandleader Jozef Skrzek's vocals are an improvement, coming off as much rougher and blusier than in the studio. Indeed, one could argue at this point the band was the closest you'd ever get to a Zeppelin-Mahavishu hybrid.

This approach is best exemplified by the first two tracks, "Pretty Face" and "Born to Die," not coincidentally the best 20-minute stretch of the album. But perhaps the most unusual track is "Clouds," a non-trivial four-and-a-half-minute atmospheric piece in which Skrzek's electric piano and organ slowly build a fantastic level of tension before launching into another heavy guitar showcase, the all-instrumental "Stormy Bay." "Wonderful Sky-Ride" is closer to the style of the first two tracks, only more overtly minor-key and with a few tape faults revealing the off-air origins of this broadcast recording.

Unfortunately, the album is not without its missteps, namely the closing "Return to the South." Despite the blues-portending title, the track is more stylistically typical of the band's approach to jamming at the time -- an uninteresting/repetitive drum beat, no riff to speak of and lots of monotonous guitar and synth soloing. All for nine minutes. Enjoy.

As keyboardist/vocalist Jozef Skrzek says in the opening moments of this recording, the music performed at this concert was made "only for today" and would never be repeated. Unfortunately, this meant the group would soon abandon this heavier approach for the epic, sprawling prog of Pamięć and Ze Słowem Biegnę Do Ciebie. But given the ever-changing nature of SBB, it seems appropriate that the only night where they got it exactly right would ultimately be just a footnote in the long career of a band that never seemed content to settle into comfortable repetition.