In Goldmine Magazine, Dave Thompson reviews three Al Stewart albums (Orange, Past Present and Future, and Modern Times) being re-issued by Esoteric Recordings:
Here’s a dilemma. Sacrifice the last round of Al Stewart reissues, with their healthy helping of bonus tracks, but not precisely stellar sound; or eschew this most recent bundle, which skip a few of the extra songs from before, but return to the original CBS tapes for a remastering that comes as close as Christmas to sounding like the original vinyl?
That’s for your ears to decide, but the fact is, these are the best-sounding Stewart CDs yet, and the most enthrallingly packaged too, with the original UK artwork restored; liners built around a brand new interview; and, between them, a large part of any self-respecting “best of Al” that predates the cat.
Certainly it’s difficult to play favorites between them – Orange boasts “You Don’t Even Know Me,” “I’m Falling” and “Night of the 4th of May,” perhaps the all-time great mea culpa confessional (hit Youtube for the Old Grey Whistle Test rendition, and marvel in speechless joy), then adds the scintillating 45 version of “News From Spain” alongside the already wonderful album take. Plus the b-side “Elvaston Place.”
PPF starts slowly but quickly finds its feet with “Last Day of June 1934,” “Post World War Two Blues” and the remarkable “Soho (Needless to Say),” before marching resolutely into epic territory with “Roads to Moscow” and “Nostradamus” – plus another stray single, “Swallow Wind” (and the 45 mix of “Terminal Eyes”); and Modern Times opens with “Carol,” closes with the title track, and … okay so if you only want two of the three reissues, that’s probably the one to pass over. Like Zero She Flies, earlier in the canon, it’s the sound of Stewart pausing for breath after one brace of brilliance, and before marching onto his next masterpiece.
Which, on this occasion was Year of the Cat, and all the fame and fortune that followed it. And which was also something of a mixed blessing, in that that album and single were so astonishingly huge that they drew a thick black line across his career, and rendered all those earlier albums “formative” works in the eyes of the Great Unwashed. When, in fact, it was simply one more highlight in a career that had positively overflowed with the things.
Three albums precede this batch in the catalog – among them a maiden effort (Bedsitter Images) that stands, in either of its originally released incarnations, among the most important, inspirational and, most of all, lasting of all late sixties singer-songwriter debuts; and a sophomore set whose subsequent renown is so unfairly focussed on the sidelong title track “Love Chronicles,” when it’s side one’s “Old Compton Street Blues” and “The Ballad of Mary Foster” that are truly its greatest accomplishments.
Hopefully we will be seeing similarly exacting reissues of both, plus the aforementioned Zero and many more besides. But for now, to paraphrase another cut from Love Chronicles, you should be listening to Al.
