Consumer Guide Album

Arlo Guthrie: Arlo Guthrie [Reprise, 1974]
This odd little record comes on like Arlo VII, which might rightfully excite semi-coma among the unconverted, but it's not. For once, Lenny Waronker's expertise produces music--playing and especially singing, not aural quality--that flirts (a little coyly) with amateurishness. Plus the record is political in a consciously oblique and sometimes fuzzy smart-hippie way. Arlo's Watergate song does justice to Tom T. Hall. And the two spirituals that make you wonder why he's fooling around with the Southern California Community Choir turn out to be about Israel. B+