Bands today might believe themselves to possess the same sort of disregard for convention that acts back in the sixties had, but that’s really not the case. If you head out to pretty much any live performance, each act on the bill is going to sound kinda like the one that follows. To a certain extent, that’s to sate the crowd, but no scene can flourish if bands mining disparate territories are kept from co-mingling. None of that means any one group is going to move deftly between genre tropes, but live scenarios go a long way to tipping off players as to what’s acceptable and what’s not.

During the late sixties, there was an expanding view of what music should do. And that, to a certain extent, resulted in the emergence of what would become fusion, jazz and otherwise, as well as progressive rock. It’s difficult to solidify a set of rules that for any of those types of music. But that’s the point. Today, group’s work towards sounding like some obscure no wave band. Listening to acts like Made in Sweden, whether or not the music’s to one’s liking, should make music fans appreciate the breadth of possibility when players aren’t focused on current trends.

Made in Sweden was a group working with nascent psych sounds and some truly jazzy guitar capacious of turning on the fuzz at a moment’s notice. The shifting back and forth does make its 196 album Snakes in a Hole more listenable on the whole – because those occasional vocals don’t.

The first seven tracks on this disc are studio endeavors – with “Lay Lady, Lay,” perhaps counting as the most atrocious. But that’s misleading, because this trio, occasionally augmented by a violinist, has chops to spare. It might just be a power trio with some jazzy progressions tossed in, but when Made in Sweden hit its collective stride, as on those latter live tracks, there weren’t too many folks who could keep company with these folks. “Roundabout” even sounds like something A Tribe Called Quest would sample – it’s all chorded jazz guitar and a funky back beat. Again, though, the band had its hand in myriad styles.

So, while the music on “Give Me Whiskey” can’t be taken to task easily, those vocals ostensibly relegate it all to a bothersome mess. The Zappa like post-production weirdness works to a certain degree, but nothing can save the band from itself. Exploring musics is a must, but sometimes there’s too much.