Arlo Guthrie's career almost sounds like the stuff of which early afternoon television is made. Raised at the folk world's equivalent of Ground Zero, with a father who cast such a mighty long musical-emotional shadow, it was surely no small potatoes for him to begin making good in his own right. But then the initial Alice's Restaurant whirlwind subsided, and our young hero faced a far more ticklish dilemma, that of making the break from his own successful past in order to—how do they say it?—stand on his own. Now, having finally crept out from beneath the double-shadowed whammy of his father's reputation and his own self-limiting Talkathon Period, Arlo basks in the sun of a Brand New Day, with a terrific new record to prove it.

Last of the Brooklyn Cowboys is very much an outgrowth of Hobo's Lullabye, its superb predecessor. The new album is perhaps less mercurial, without any obvious highs or weak moments, but Arlo's own songwriting is so greatly improved here that he more than makes up for the potential damage too much homogeneity could do. Besides, Arlo's own compositions provide the consistency that is the album's very backbone. What he's done here is to assemble a collage touching diverse corners of Americana, then treated each song with a wonderfully unifying diffidence, and finally bound it all together with proof—via his own original material—that he's truly part of the album's wonderfully vivid panorama.

Unfortunately, description can't even begin to do Arlo justice, because it overlooks the loving sense of place that takes the album way beyond the realm of its material. A less sure artist might be hard-pressed to draw out what's timeless in the potential camp of "Miss the Mississippi and You," or the glibness of "This Troubled Mind of Mine" ("Now if I stay out late/You know I'm swingin' on another gate.... Got me a baby that's got some sense/Cuttin' in at your expense"). And the reworkings of "Lovesick Blues" and "Gates Of Eden" take on unusual impact (despite relatively standard arrangements) within the context of the album, because Arlo can present Hank Williams and Bob Dylan with an identical sense of history.

The instrumentals—two Irish fiddle pieces and a piano rag—never fully transcend the role of filler. But Arlo's own songs ("Last Train," "Cowboy Song," "Cooper's Lament," "Uncle Jeff") fit perfectly into the idiom he's created for himself; they sound as authentic—and, for his purposes, they are as authentic—as any antique material could be. And although the album isn't really conducive to preferences, being so good all the way through, I seem to be stuck on Woody's "Gypsy Davy," a curiously feminist ballad featuring Arlo's most insidious vocal since "Coming into Los Angeles."

A gentle version of Woody's "Ramblin' Round" is also included here, providing the album with a fittingly wistful finale. And if, like the song so delicately puts it, "there's a hungry mouth for every peach," then maybe there are hungry ears too. For peaches like this one. (RS 137)

JANET MASLIN