205. Cat Stevens, "Tea for the Tillerman"

 


You may think of Cat Stevens as a lovable little garden gnome, playing his ballads of love and frolic with a vole playing a lute made from half a walnut shell, but this shit is kinda dark.  Did everybody already know how bleak some of this album is?  I mean, surely you know "Wild World," a breakup song ("And it's breakin' my heart you're leavin'/Baby, I'm grievin'") in which he basically tells the chick who dumped him how much she's gonna get fucked over without him, but it gets way worse.  Check out this verse from "Sad Lisa," as if the title didn't give you a heads up:

She sits in a corner by the door
There must be more I can tell her
If she really wants me to help her
I'll do what I can to show her the way
And maybe one day I will free her
Though I know no one can see her
Lisa Lisa, sad Lisa Lisa

Sounds like what Lisa needs is an SSRI, Cat Stevens, not your bummer tunes.

I don't know what to say about this record.  Cat Stevens (later Yusuf, of course, after his conversion to Islam) is an institution who has sold millions of records and has been in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for almost 10 years, but this album is not super my thing.  I will say that I noticed for the first time the obvious influence he had on Nashville art-avant-post-rock-country band Lambchop, but that's neither here nor there.  

So I wouldn't say I particularly enjoyed listening to it, but I appreciate it for what it is, and that's gotta be enough sometimes.  It wasn't as bad as Eagles.  Cat Stevens doesn't need me to like him.  He's doing fine.  You wouldn't know it from this album, though.

(Also, guess who did the weird and creepy album cover?  Mr. Stevens, of course.)

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? I mean, there should be some Cat Stevens album on here, so I guess so.

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