Just what the world needs right now: a born again religious fanatic singing the blues. And singing it if no not badly, with a song here and a song there even better than that, not very well either. The former Cat Stevens went from being a UK version of a Brill Building songwriter to a folk star to a man of God, a man of Islam (the faith of my own parents I might add). Cat turned his back on the world of pop stardom and raised his family and in the early 00s released an album of children’s religious songs and followed it with the excellent An Other Cup in 2006 and the less excellent 2009 Roadsinger.
So five years down the line and the Godforsaken Rick Rubin gets his hands on poor Yusuf and the rest is history, this draggy , boring, lo fi blues album. Nothing is very good here, but a coupla songs are good in a great way. First and foremost, “Editing Floor Blues” is an excellent original taking Stevens (or Yusuf or Islam) through the past with a disdainful eye at the way his past history has been edited to reflect a storyline that doesn’t exist “and the truth was buried on the editing floor” on this electric blues track. Unfortunately, this man’s voice is too compassionate for anything edgy, it isn’t strong enough to carry his sentiments.
“You Are My Sunshine” is not the nursery rhyme you expected and the Johnny Winter’s “Dying To Live’ is elegiac and beautiful, though Cat probably recorded it before Winters died.
Otherwise, this is self-important dross and will be forgotten long, long, long before people stop singing “Wild World”. A real dog from the Cat.
Grade: C
