Even though he once stole my girlfriend (long story), and I've never entirely forgiven him for it, I have to admit that I've missed Al Stewart.

Likewise, I have to begrudgingly admit that it's great to see him back in such fine form, doing what he really does best on his new album, Sparks Of Ancient Light. The album comes out in about two weeks on the Appleseed Recordings label.

For those new to Mr. Stewart, that something he does so well is weave these wonderful historical references into his songs. Literate as they are, Al Stewart's songs have this weird and wonderful way touching a personal nerve. Not only that, they can also be downright catchy.

As a lyricist who has a unique way of wrapping an engaging narrative around an equally compelling melody, I'd actually put Al Stewart just a notch under people like Dylan and Neil Young. He also has that rare gift of being able to turn a phrase in the sort of cinematic, universal way that his songs become personalized in a manner that, subject matter aside, nearly anyone can relate to.

Stewart really can be that good. And during his brief run at the top in the seventies and early eighties, everybody knew it.

The thing is, once Al Stewart hit the big time, he just as quickly abandoned that wonderfully literate storytelling, replete with historical references as it was, that got him there in the first place. On his big hits like "Time Passages" and "Year Of The Cat," the descriptive language remained. But the stories accompanying Stewart's best songs like "Roads To Moscow" and "Nostradamus" — songs that took you to another time and place the same way that a great novel does — were long gone.

By the mid-eighties, Al Stewart was just another cog in the soft rock treadmill of people like Christopher Cross and Gerry Rafferty, and in even quicker time he also suffered their same fate as a footnote of latter day, post-sixties folk-rock. Talented though he was, there would be no Dylan sort of accolades here. Today, Al Stewart is largely regarded as the sort of also-ran that doesn't even rate James Taylor props in the bigger picture.