al stewart the year of the cat full album mp3 free download

Sophisticated orchestrations pad out the guitar and piano based sound. Robert Christgau, Christgau's Record Guide, 1981.Īl Stewart, the bed-sit balladeer, was consciously casting off his folk music background and obsessively recurring themes of unrequited love when Year of the Cat was recorded. I ask you, did Eric Ambler have an ear for melody? B. Well, actually the historical note is limited this time out to one song about Lord Grenville and references to Leonardo, phantom harlequins, etc. Rather than gothics or sci-fi, Stewart goes for historical novels, and as long as he shuts up about Nostradomous - who inspired last year's Past, Present and Future, you'll remember - I say good for him. Best cuts: 'On The Border,' 'Midas Shadow,' 'Broadway Hotel,' 'Year Of The Cat.' This set was recorded at the Abbey Road Studios in London, and through heavy use of strings has a symphonic, almost classical beauty. Produced by Alan Parsons, who has scored so strongly in the past couple of months with his Tales Of Mystery And Imagination LP. Mellow album from the man who had a top 30 LP last year with Modern Times features Stewart's cool vocals and exceptionally well-arranged songs that are progressive without being pretentious. And, luckily, he ssstill playsss dynamite guitar.

Aside from Stewart's distracting speech (or recording) defect, though, this is a nice enough low-key collection with a warm, easy atmosphere. When he is set loose on something like the gloweringly melodramatic 'On the Border,' with such lines as 'Smuggling guns and arms across the Spanish border' to be gotten through, the results are downright hilarious. None of them are helped at all, however, by Stewart's hissing sibilant 's''s, which give even the elegiac 'Lord Grenville' a prissily comic, Paul Lyndish quality. Here's a bunch of sentimental, softly packaged songs by Al Stewart.

Al stewart the year of the cat full album mp3 free download