Consumer Guide Album

The Band: Stage Fright [Capitol, 1970]
I've gone both ways with this group--if Music from Big Pink didn't tempt me away from my urban fastness, The Band did manage to make me jump around in my apartment. What gets in the way of this follow-up, however, is neither natural alienation nor critical overanticipation--it's the music itself, which simply overmatches the words. The tunes are so bright and doughty, and the musicians pitch in with so much will, that the domestic banalities of side one seem out of place in a way those of Delaney & Bonnie, say, never do. And if the settings are too complex for what Robbie Robertson knows, they're too unfocused for what he doesn't know, as the confused politico-philosophical grapplings on side two make agonizingly clear. Memorable as most of these songs are, they never hook in--never give up the musical-verbal phrase that might encapsulate their every-which-way power. Which perhaps means that they don't have much to say. B+