Between his first album, Alice's Restaurant, and his fifth, Hobo's Lullaby, Arlo Guthrie metamorphosed from a comic monologist into a first-rate singer, song interpreter and writer. He found a pair of sympathetic producers in John Pilla and Lenny Waronker who helped make albums three through five (Running Down the Road, Washington County, and Hobo's Lullaby) sure-handed and occasionally brilliant. But on his sixth LP, Last of the Brooklyn Cowboys, the cement that held Guthrie's style, material, and production together failed to grip. And unfortunately, Arlo Guthrie suggests not that the earlier album was an easily correctable miscalculation, but that things are becoming progressively more unglued, as the artist becomes more detached from his work.

With a different approach, Guthrie might have gotten away with the spiritual "Go Down Moses" or the Woody Guthrie children's work song, "Bling Blang," but the arrangements — complete with the Southern California Community Choir doing standard glee-club harmonies on the former and a novelty-tune approach on the latter — turn them into inane fluff. Woody Guthrie's "Deportee" is sung by Arlo with a surprising lack of conviction, considering his previous moving interpretations of his father's songs. And Arlo's rendition of the Jimmie Rodgers yodeler, "When the Cactus Is in Bloom," comes off as a technical exercise in an obscure tongue.

As for the rest, his stabs at social commentary are forced, and the inherent hollowness of several tracks is exaggerated by the addition of strings. "Won't Be Long" and "Last To Leave," the two lone successful attempts at evoking poignancy, and "Hard Times," with its cynicism sharpened by its bluegrass treatment, are the album's salvageable tracks.

Throughout Arlo Guthrie, there's too much going on, and the heap of superfluous touches underscore rather than conceal the album's meagerness. It all sounds suspiciously like the artist considered this record an imposition rather than an opportunity for self-expression. (RS 165)

BUD SCOPPA