Al Stewart - A Piece of Yesterday: The Anthology (EMI)
3/5
By: JJ Florio
Al Stewart (not to be confused with American sculptor Albert Stewart) is a Scottish born singer/songwriter whose varying, five-decade spanning career is accurately captured in this latest two disc Anthology, out now on EMI. The peak of his success came with the 1976 hit 'Year Of The Cat', which sold over a million copies in America, yet his lack of a major hit in the UK has kept him from notoriety in his home land (though it's worth noting that his '06 Autumn tour sees him playing The Albert Hall - not that obscure, then...)
Stewart's early recordings, of which his late 60's Decca debut 'The Elf' (featuring a one Jimmy Page on guitar) is sadly omitted from this collection, are very firmly rooted in the introspective folk rock style of the time; think Dylan, Donovan, Buffalo Springfield, etc. First "proper" single 'Bedsitter Images' is an articulately claustrophobic tale of a young man starting his life alone in a big city and is a solid example of the genre. It is here, in this troubadour style of song writing that Stewart excels. Vividly setting scenes and painting pictures through song, he seems to be at his best when he tells tales from an outsider's point of view, as is told in songs like 'In Brooklyn', which is a lucid tale of youthful naivety in unfamiliar surrounding. The artistic climate of the late 60's supported his affinity for observational lyrics and natural acoustic style. This was definitely Stewart's best period. Even though more acclaim and mass popularity reached him during the mid-seventies, similarly with other artists of the time such as Jackson Browne and Elton John, the earlier, less "hit ridden" era contains their most absorbing work (See Elton John's 'Tumbleweed Connection' and Jackson Browne's 'Songs For Everyman' as good examples of this).
Listening to this chronologically ordered anthology as a whole, it is interesting to hear how Stewart adopts the current recording style of the time. From the intimacy of his "folk" period to the big reverb ethics of the 80's, this collection is like a condensed history of popular music production. The further that Stewart got from the more acoustic 60's ethos, the more out of place and time his song writing ideals had become. This being particularly true of his 80's work, a time of high production ethics and musical special effects seemed to strangle his simple folk rooted song craft. Some of the nineties work sees a slight return to form, particularly in Marion The Chatelaine, where uninhibited by the studio saturation of the previous decade, Stewart's song writing and fluent guitar playing are once again brought to the fore.
All songwriters who are blessed with career longevity have a tempestuous and difficult relationship with the passage of time. Even the most prodigiously gifted have struggled to continue with the effortless brilliance often achieved in earlier work (think 'Eleanor Rigby' to 'Ebony and Ivory' in less than two decades). In short, time tests creativity and this anthology is a vivid testimony to this.
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