Release Year: 1974
Rating: 8/10
Track Listing: 1) The Great Deceiver; 2) Lament; 3) We'll Let You Know; 4) The Night Watch; 5) Trio; 6) The Mincer; 7) Starless and Bible Black; 8) Fracture.
Here's where they showed us how the sausage is made. I use that metaphor because, in this and other incarnations of Crimson, a lot of great songs evolved out of live jams. This album is part studio, part live, which means that half of these tracks are still in the larval stage. I still consider the parts mostly great individually, but the thing as a whole doesn't flow well, which is a real shame.
The practice of splicing studio and live tracks together into a single album was not a new one: Family had recently done the same thing on Anyway in 1970, with mostly good results, and the Stones had even thrown in some live tracks on their own records before that. But so many stretches of this album are quiet, apprehensive moments of live improvisations when the members were testing the waters before building up steam: an essential part of a jam session, sure, but not something to be included on a holistic product like this. Every time they start a jam, one must crank up the volume to hear anything, and the album's momentum is lost while the band figures out where to go. Most of these jams do get interesting eventually, though. Whether it's the funky, bluesy swagger of "We'll Let You Know", which showcases some of Wetton's most rollicking bass work, or the lovely tranquility of "Trio", on which Bill Bruford is credited with "admirable restraint" for not playing, there are always moments of that enigmatic "white magic" to which Fripp once referred...even if we have to slog through moments of sleepy noodling in the first half of the title track, or some atonal messes like "The Mincer", to get there.
On the plus side, "Lament" starts out as a quiet and morose ballad before slamming into the most bitter and cynical rocking number the band had ever done. Can't you almost see John Wetton swapped out for Roger Waters for that one? My favorite, though, is "The Night Watch", named after the unofficial moniker of the Rembrandt painting [here]. This is the most emotional KC song for me, a haunting and heartfelt tribute to the first flickers of modern self-determination depicted in that Renaissance masterpiece. Fripp's solo is full of lamentation and longing, while remaining literate and dignified, and I can never get enough of it.
And of course, no review of this album is complete without mentioning "Fracture". This is where that classic King Crimson trope, of tension built and then released, is best enshrined. The piece feels precarious from the beginning, but soon moves into outright danger. But why did they have to keep the famous "moto perpetuo" section so quiet compared to the rest of the song? This is the piece that Fripp himself called the hardest thing he ever played! It's the purest essence of his style as a guitarist, as complex as an orb weaver's web and twice as beautiful. But make no mistake: the tension has gone nowhere, and when we finally explode into the climactic section, the fury is unbelievable. Even Broof himself can't resist throwing out an exhilarated "wooo!" as he and Wetton thunder along like a planet-killing meteor shower.
Finally, a certain outdated lyrical term aside, I cannot give enough praise to "The Great Deceiver". To start with a song as ass-kicking as this, with that dizzy, zig-zagging riff drilling into your ears, and the rhythm bashing over your head, is an instant elevation of the album's potential-- not to mention the chorus that contains the only lyrics Robert Fripp ever wrote for the band. This is where we hear the best aspect of this album: the mix of heavy blues, hard jazz, metal, and funk, all done with classical sensibilities, as if the worldliness and literacy of Larks' Tongues in Aspic were to tack on a bit of street smarts and grit. It's just a shame they had to lean so far into the live jams that break the flow in such a big way. Pare those down, blend the tracks together better, and it's a nine.
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