Sometimes in the music world a producer is just a producer, coordinating and managing players and studio staff during the recording of an album to ensure everything goes smoothly. And sometimes they are visionary architects of sound without whom a particular album might have met an entirely different fate.<\/p>\n
In 1975 Scotland-born, England-raised Al Stewart was a singer-songwriter whose folky soft-rock stylings (think \u201cBritish Cat Stevens\u201d in terms of feel, if not substance) had won him success substantial enough to keep him on contract with CBS Records for eight years, but modest enough that the label allowed his contract to expire. A year later he was riding a wave of success that would carry him through the rest of his long and still active career. The difference-maker was this singular album, on which Stewart perfected his art while working in tandem with budding producer Alan Parsons, three years gone from engineering Pink Floyd\u2019s Dark Side Of The Moon<\/i> and in the midst of launching his own musical career as leader of the nascent Alan Parsons Project (APP).<\/p>\n
Recording at the same Abbey Road Studios where Dark Side<\/i> and numerous other Parsons productions would take shape, and deploying multiple members of the still-developing APP entourage of players, Stewart and Parsons crafted an album that elevated Stewart\u2019s clever, literate, not the least bit flashy songs to works of soft-rock art.<\/p>\n
Over the course of his previous albums, Stewart\u2019s style had evolved from introspective singer-songwriter folk toward intricate story-songs with narratives often based on or referencing real historical figures and events (an approach often mirrored by Big Big Train<\/a> in recent years). For his sixth outing, 1975\u2019s Modern Times<\/i>, Stewart had joined forces with Parsons and achieved his first charting single\u2014\u201cCarol,\u201d which reached #30 in the US. That wasn\u2019t enough, however, to convince CBS Records to extend his expiring contract in the UK, though he was still signed to Janus Records in the US (later folded into Arista), and would soon be added by RCA for the rest of the world. It was a decision CBS would quickly regret.<\/p>\n Year Of The Cat<\/i> saw the core crew from Modern Times<\/i> build on that trial run to reach its full potential. Stewart\u2019s longtime collaborators Tim Renwick (guitars), George Ford (bass) and Peter Wood (keys) are joined here by his musical foil of the next 20 years Peter White (guitars), future APP stalwart Stuart Elliott (drums), and frequent APP collaborators Andrew Powell (string arrangements) and David Pack (backing vocals). Together they crafted an album that has stood the test of time and remains Stewart\u2019s career apex.<\/p>\n Opener \u201cLord Grenville\u201d sets the scene in suitably understated fashion, a historical narrative whose rather sleepy cadence achieves pleasing fullness thanks to Powell\u2019s orchestration, a densely textured arrangement, and Parsons\u2019 crystal-clear sonics. As usual, even Stewart\u2019s more obscure tales are elevated by a single penetrating line: \u201cOur time is just a point along a line \/ That runs forever with no end.\u201d<\/p>\n The pace picks up with \u201cOn The Border,\u201d driven by Wood\u2019s restless, rippling piano and synth and the trademark spaciousness and clarity of Parsons\u2019 production. The painterly, impressionistic lyric is brought to life by White\u2019s Flamenco-inflected Spanish guitar (which he learned specifically for the song<\/a>). The Spanish feel infiltrates \u201cMidas Shadow\u201d as well, as Stewart sings of a \u201cConquistador in search of gold\u201d while White solos above Wood\u2019s moody keys. The atmosphere turns sunny for the yacht rock number \u201cSand In Your Shoes,\u201d a light palate cleanser leading into the rockingest tune here, rolling-and-tumbling side one closer \u201cIf It Doesn\u2019t Come Naturally, Leave It.\u201d Anyone who thinks writing a song lyric is easy work should study this one; every word of every line fits like a puzzle piece, each syllable and instance of alliteration and assonance calibrated and rendered with die-cut precision. <\/p>\n Side two opens with acoustic and piano dueting through the lilting \u201cFlying Sorcery,\u201d a gorgeously rendered celebration of flight that manages to rhyme its searching refrain \u201cAre you there?\u201d in half a dozen clever and evocative ways in just 4:20. \u201cBroadway Hotel\u201d is another impressionistic historical narrative that feels more like a painting than a song, with guest Bobby Bruce\u2019s slicing violin solo adding flair to the core band\u2019s suitably dramatic renderings. \u201cOne Stage Before\u201d ups the tempo without altering the mood, an echoey, haunting acoustic number embellished with exotic synth and percussion textures as Stewart sings of \u201chalf-familiar faces in the second row \/ Ghost-like with the footlights in their eyes.\u201d In the late going, Renwick plants an exclamation point on the song with a gorgeous, soaring, rather Gilmour-esque solo.<\/p>\n While everything up to this point has been artfully rendered, don\u2019t be surprised if the hairs on the back of your neck stand at attention the instant Wood begins the opening piano stanzas of \u201cYear Of The Cat,\u201d which he co-composed with Stewart. (To this day Stewart likes to tell the tale<\/a> of how he heard Wood noodling on those chords at sound check over and over and told him he wanted to write lyrics to go with them. Wood told him \u201cNo, it\u2019s an instrumental,\u201d to which the cheeky\u2014and correct\u2014Stewart replied \u201cNot for long.\u201d) The resulting song has a kind of timeless elegance that\u2019s often aspired to, but miraculous to actually achieve. <\/p>\n It’s more than just the stunning music, though\u2014which by the end features the whole band plus a shearing sax solo from guest Phil Kenzie\u2014it\u2019s Stewart\u2019s bewitching lyric, which probably belongs in a museum. Before you\u2019re four lines in Stewart has referenced \u201ca morning from a Bogart movie\u201d and a character who strolls \u201cthrough the crowd like Peter Lorre \/ Contemplating a crime,\u201d and his descriptions only get more cinematic from there. If \u201cShe comes out of the sun in a silk dress running \/ Like a watercolor in the rain\u201d doesn\u2019t do it for you, how about \u201cWell, she looks at you so coolly \/ And her eyes shine like the moon in the sea\u201d? If neither of those puts you right in that moment, I can\u2019t help you. In the end, the song does what all truly great ones do\u2014serves as a time capsule of such potency that hearing a single snippet transports you back to the moment when you first heard it.<\/p>\n