Cahoots - THE BAND***

Life Is A Carnival/When I Paint My Masterpiece/Last Of The Blacksmiths/Where Do We Go From Here/4% Pantomime/Shootout In Chinatown/The Moon Struck One/Thinkin' Out Loud/Smoke Signal/Volcano/The River Hymn

By the time of the release of Cahoots the songwriting skills of The Band appeared to be in decline compared with their first two albums. It would be four years before they released any new compositions. (US:21 UK:41)

“While not The Band's strongest album, Cahoots is still worth listening to. Life Is A Carnival is a classic, and their arrangement of Dylan's When I Paint My Masterpiece makes this cover the definitive version.”

“Cahoots is one of the weakest albums in The Band’s catalogue. A weak Band album, however, is still a little above average. It may have been three straight years of incessant touring and recording but they appeared tired. Robbie Robertson again wrote or co-wrote all the songs on the album except for one Dylan tune. In some way it can be considered almost experimental as they would strike out in a number of directions with mixed results.”

“Unfairly overlooked, and undeserving of its bad reputation. Not nearly as good as its predecessors, true, but far from bad.”

“Nearly every track just oozes mediocrity, nothing is truly tied together into something worth treasuring, and certainly nothing like the magnificent first two LPs.”

“Without a doubt this is The Band's least interesting album. There is little emotion contained within the songs and the playing is rather poor, masked by horns to some extent, or even just brought down by the attitude of the whole session. Downbeat would have been a good word but personally it lacks the emotion to be so. And the truth is they try to sound upbeat through gritted teeth but it never works.”

“Cahoots has been unfairly maligned over the years. We should acknowledge that The Band weren't content to simply rehash the formula they'd discovered on the brown album and were eager to push onto new territory.”

“It is true that Cahoots is not in the same league as the first three, but that's all relative. This is a solid, sometimes spectacular album, that shows off the group's musical prowess by playing over 40 different instruments and Robbie Robertson's supreme wordsmanship. Life Is A Carnival is an aptly named as it has a carnival like sound with the cacophony of horns.”