Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

More mimsy soft rock from Cat Stevens: Tea for the Tillerman 2 reviewed

Cat is a singer-songwriter who, tellingly, had his most enduring hit with a song he didn’t write

issue 26 September 2020
Grade: B–

Time has been kind to Cat Stevens’s reputation — his estrangement from the music business and rad BAME credentials bestowing upon him an edginess which his mimsy fragile-voiced soft rock never really deserved. It’s the kind of retrospective benediction usually only death from some bad skag at the age of 27 can provide. Never mind anything else, I’d have barred him entry to the US just for calling an album Teaser and the Firecat. This one, meanwhile, is described as ‘his 1970 masterpiece’. Really? I don’t think so, although in its original incarnation it was pleasant enough on the ears, tinkling away on the turntable in the infant school staffroom.

This is the album ‘reimagined’ by Yusuf.

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