The Band werent planning on making an album when they started work on their fourth LP, 1971s Cahoots. Their manager, Albert Grossman, was building a recording studio in Woodstock, New York, where the members of the Band lived, and he invited them over to try the place out as finishing touches were being put on the studio. Their experiments eventually coalesced into Cahoots, and the albums genesis is borne out in a final product thats often mired in a sense of ennui and a lack of direction. Titles like "Where Do We Go from Here" and "Thinking Out Loud" practically howl over the decline in the groups songwriting process -- while the opener, "Life Is a Carnival," is a corker, "Last of the Blacksmiths" could thematically pass for a parody of the compelling Americana of Music from Big Pink and The Band, "4% Pantomime" is a meditation on getting drunk thats unmemorable beyond a guest vocal from Van Morrison, and the most joyous song here, "When I Paint My Masterpiece," was gifted to them by Bob Dylan. Most of the album was recorded without all five members in the studio at once, and while the performances are both expert and soulful -- these musicians were essentially incapable of playing any other way -- the cohesion of their best work seems just out of reach on Cahoots, without the taut fire of which they were capable. (The drug and alcohol problems that would haunt the Band were beginning to make their presence known as well.) And yet, the Band simply didnt know how to make a bad album, and there are moments on Cahoots that connect strongly enough to make that clear, with the LP rallying on its final three cuts, the emphatic "Smoke Signals" and "Volcano" and the sweetly elegiac "The River Hymn." Prior to Cahoots, it seemed the Band could do no wrong in the studio, and though there are many good things here, it pales in comparison to what they offered just a few years earlier. ~ Mark Deming

Rovi

In comparison to its predecessors, Cahoots, the Bands fourth album, may be characterized as an essentially minor effort that nevertheless contains a few small pleasures. These pleasures begin with the leadoff track, "Life Is a Carnival," a song that continues the theme of Stage Fright by emphasizing the false nature of show business and its impact on reality. The song features a lively Dixieland horn chart courtesy of Allen Toussaint. "When I Paint My Masterpiece," a Bob Dylan song making its recorded debut here as the second selection, is another welcome track, buoyed by mandolin and accordion in a charming arrangement appropriate to its tale of an odd trip to Europe. "4% Pantomime" is a duet between the Bands Richard Manuel and Van Morrison that is entertaining to hear, even if the song itself is slight. Unfortunately, that just about completes the list of the albums attractions. Annotator Rob Bowman claims that the overriding theme of the songs is "extinction and the sadness that accompanies the passing of things that once were held to be of great value"; actually, there is no overriding theme to the minor songs written by Robbie Robertson. Several of the songs lyrics come across as half-baked film scenarios, but they fail to be evocative, and they are paired to music lacking in structure. The failure is solely in the writing; the Band sounds as good as ever playing the songs, with singers Manuel, Levon Helm, and Rick Danko all performing effectively and primary instrumentalist Garth Hudson filling in the arrangements cleverly. Its just that the material is not strong enough, particularly in comparison to the three impressive albums the Band had released previously. ~ William Ruhlmann

Rovi