CAT STEVENS (YUSUF): THE LAUGHING APPLE (2017)
1) Blackness Of The Night; 2)
See What Love Did To Me; 3) The Laughing Apple; 4) Olive Hill; 5) Grandsons; 6)
Mighty Peace; 7) Mary And The Little Lamb; 8) You Can Do (Whatever)!; 9)
Northern Wind (Death Of Billy The Kid); 10) Don't Blame Them; 11) I'm So Sleepy.
At this rate, I guess, if Cat-Yusuf lives to be
a hundred, his last albums will consist exclusively of re-recordings of his old
catalog. The Laughing Apple not only
takes its title from one of the songs on New
Masters, but it actually presents no less than four songs off that record in new arrangements. We do remember that
Cat never really appreciated Mike Hurst's production of his first two albums,
and took the first chance he could to get himself rid of the 1967 baroque poshness
of the arrangements; so this move may at once represent an understandable pull
of nostalgia for one's youth and a
desire to set things right, if at all possible.
The problem is, New Masters was not a great album by itself, and the arrangements
were not that bad — listening to the
new versions back-to-back with the old ones mainly just reminds me of how much
Cat-Yusuf's voice has aged after all, although, to be fair, on ʽNorthern Windʼ
he goes down and deep quite intentionally, so that the song's atmosphere could
be changed from youthful romanticism to experienced wisdom. In another case —
that of the title track — he replaces the old Morricone-style orchestral
arrangement with a long-awaited mid-Eastern arrangement, and now the old parable
may be taken for a piece of Sufi wisdom. But ʽBlackness Of The Nightʼ is
basically just the old song without strings, so if the idea of a small chunk of
New Masters Naked actively appeals
to you... well, here you go.
I regard it as more of a symbolic gesture — the
old man coming full circle and offering an elderly take on the sentiments of
his youth — and, naturally, am more interested in whether he still has anything
new left to say. Well... not really. In a way, this is a retread from the
darkness and tension of Tell 'Em I'm
Gone, back to the placated comfort zone of Roadsinger: the first original song, ʽSee What Love Did To Meʼ, is
a soft country-rocker where we learn that the protagonist used to be "a
blindfolded bumblebee", and "now I see what God did for me / He made
me see life flowery", from which we can conclude that the protagonist is
still a bumblebee, but no longer blindfolded and capable of clearly seeing
everything he might be sucking on... oh, hang on, we got sort of sidetracked
here, wrong direction.
Back on target: almost everything else is a
bunch of pleasant folk and country ballads, very nice in terms of texture and
atmosphere, but gliding past you on wings of butter and cream, so softly and
smoothly that there is barely anything specific to catch your attention. At
this point, the lyrics are consistently more interesting than the music:
ʽGrandsonsʼ, for instance, states that "I've got a thing about seeing my
grandson grow old", with a strange and hardly predictable desire to stay
on and witness the wonders of technological progress ("I just can't wait
to see that city on the moon", actually a fairly reasonable sentiment for
1967 but hardly for 2017), while its acoustic melody does not come across as
memorable. ʽMary And The Little Lambʼ is musically just that, but lyrically,
Yusuf adds an extra twist to the story to tighten the bonds between Mary and
the lamb even tighter — too tight,
one might say if one took the words "they'll be loving a long long time
from now" too literally, but... hang on, wrong direction again.
Anyway, I think it is best to just take The Laughing Apple as a children's
album — you know, like one of those that he'd done for the kids in order to
educate them about the ways of the Prophet, but more musical and without any
specific religious indoctrination this time. I can easily imagine a toddler
cuddling up to its soft, simple charms, and eventually drifting to sleep as the
record appropriately concludes with a re-recording of ʽI'm So Sleepyʼ. Perhaps
that was precisely the goal — to make a simple, unassuming, childish album;
peaceful, loving, and cozy. Sometimes such records might feature great
songwriting, too, but Cat-Yusuf is no longer interested in great songwriting,
because striving for greatness would prevent him from carrying out his debt of
humility. Unfortunately, this means that The
Laughing Apple cannot get any active endorsement from me; but as a mild
spiritual sedative, it just might work.
Don't get this motivation on this. I actually think New Masters was a great album, but that's my taste, and the orchestration does the songs more justice.
ReplyDeleteCouldn't listen to the end of these songs because they just sounded so slow and morose. I suspect that if he had promoted the songs on New Masters at the time and created more poppy versions of later songs, he would have been a much bigger star.
But it's just conjecture.
"Grandsons" is a re-working of a 1970 song I've Got A Thing About Seeing My Grandson Grow Old which was first released on his boxset about 15 years ago. You need to review the boxset previoulsy unrealesed tracks for completness sake!
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