Arlo Guthrie
Alice's Restaurant

THE REVIEW

For my first review as Danny The Kid, I chose an unusual record by an original and underrated folksinger: this curious character made his recording debut in 1967 with "Alice's Restaurant," the very same year that his father, the famous Woody Guthrie, passed away after a long illness. Arlo Guthrie was a young man in his twenties at that time, full of enthusiasm and creativity, who managed to create the album he would be most remembered for right off the bat, while also successfully expressing what would broadly become his characteristic style in the years to follow.

"Alice's Restaurant Massacree", the highlight of the album, is, in essence, a true earworm, perhaps the most ingenious earworm ever written: eighteen minutes marked by a relentless ragtime guitar loop on which the debut artist, with the artistry of a seasoned entertainer, weaves an offbeat and seemingly endless monologue that, starting from an insignificant legal incident experienced by the same Arlo Guthrie two years earlier, grotesquely expands into a biting satire of the American judicial system and the draft for the Vietnam War. Despite the track’s torrential length and its unchanging repetitiveness, "Alice's Restaurant Massacree" never bores the listener, revealing itself as something between a talking blues and a well-conceived comedic sketch; even at just twenty years old, Guthrie Jr. handles it like a veteran storyteller, and overall, the song is absolutely enjoyable and entertaining. "Alice's Restaurant Massacree" would become a minor cult hit of the late '60s American protest movement, and in 1969, Arthur Penn turned it into a successful film. It also became the undisputed signature piece of Arlo Guthrie, who, throughout his career, would perform it in various forms, with lyrical variations and increasingly exaggerated runtimes.

The rest of the album consists of brief and lively folk songs which, although slightly raw, present what would become Arlo Guthrie's typical style: light, humorous and ironic, the style of an artist with no desire or intention of being a prophet, who is the first not to take himself too seriously: Arlo, besides being an excellent songwriter, is also a skilled performer with a slightly nasal and well-pitched voice that is always very pleasant to listen to, as he, accompanied by his trusty acoustic guitar, performs catchy and appealing tunes such as the hilarious "Ring-Around-A-Rosie Rag" and "The Motorcycle Song", as well as ballads like "Highway In The Wind" and the beautiful "I'm Going Home", serene and slightly melancholic. "Chilling In The Wind" stands out for its captivating psychedelic sound, "Now And Then" for its effective melody, great rhythm, and excellent interpretation, establishing itself as the best song of the bunch.

"Alice's Restaurant" as a whole is a great record, not just for the epic opening monologue, but also as a beautiful firework display kicking off a long and fruitful career; it only missed a true masterpiece album to definitively cement its place, but perhaps this was never of paramount concern to Arlo Guthrie.