Super Active Wizzo

The very title of Super Active Wizzo suggests a fizzy, over-charged, amped-up version of Roy Wood's first band as a leader, Wizzard -- and, in a way, that's exactly what Wood's Wizzo Band was, with its lone 1977 LP recalling nothing so much as Wizzard Brew in how it teeters under the weight of punishing jams. No song on this six-track album clocks in at under five minutes, with two weighing in at over the 11-minute mark -- a structure mirrored on Wizzard Brew, which was dominated by nine and 13-minute tracks. But where that album was consciously a heavy, heavy rock & roll album, almost metallic in its attack, Super Active Wizzo has a lighter touch, preferring galloping rhythms and jazzy harmonies to bludgeoning riffs. That doesn't mean that it's an easier listen by any means. Wood may tease listeners with a pop hook every once and a while -- the one that provides the structure for "Waitin' at This Door" is pretty good -- but he never follows through, straying from the melody so a horn riff can circle or indulging in mock disco on the never-ending "Another Wrong Night," which may be a joke but is no easier to take if it is (particularly because the same jibe is repeated a few cuts later with "Giant Footsteps [Jubilee]"). This may hint at jazz-rock, but only in how it rides a groove: there is no improvisation or soloing, and the grooves stay in one unfunky place for too long of a stretch. It all adds up to perhaps the weakest single LP ever to bear Roy Wood's name.