AtoZ

On its release 50 years ago, Cahoots was initially branded a minor work, less immediately compelling than The Band’s previous three albums. Unhappy with the finished results himself, Robbie Robertson has enlisted Bob Clearmountain to provide a new mix in order to give the recordings more “space” and clarity, and it especially reaps rewards on the woozy duet between Richard Manuel and co-writer Van Morrison, “4% Pantomime”, and Allen Toussaint’s New Orleans brass arrangement on “Life Is A Carnival”. Robertson’s lyrical narratives on the likes of “Shoot Out In Chinatown” and “Last Of The Blacksmiths” in particular boast a filmic quality but a handful of tracks still feel suspiciously like placeholders awaiting replacement by more robust material.

Extras: 6/10. A second CD of a digitally cleaned-up bootleg from a Paris show earlier in the year, the version of “When I Paint My Masterpiece” in more noticeably sketch form, plus half a dozen out-takes and instrumentals.

TERRY STAUNTON

A modest archive excavation project that ballooned into a career-spanning double album of lost and rare tracks, delivers a rich and mostly impressive gallery of sepia-tinted musical postcards from Zach Condon. There are some familiar numbers here, notably the gorgeous, sweeping, brassy waltz “Elephant Gun” and the rollicking carnival gallop“Carousels”. But the 17 previously unreleased tracks, many remixed and remastered, are generally strong and add welcome new colours to Condon’s palette, from the quasi-reggae rhythm and grainy analogue synths of “Bercy” to the sleek electro-choral whoosh of “Irrlichter” and the wistfully tumbling shanty “Fisher Island Sound”. Standout surprises include the clamouring avant-folk ballad “Your Sails” and the warm, surging “So Slowly”,, but nor does anything diminish his well-regarded reputation as the Wes Anderson of archly nostalgic, fastidiously crafted, globe-hopping indie-folk.