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 Stewart, that something he does so well is weave these wonderful historical references into his songs.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is, once Al Stewart hit the big time, he just as quickly abandoned that wonderfully literate storytelling, replete with historical references as it was, that got him there in the first place.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.
Article comments
1 - suzanneetandre
You did'nt like Orange ? !
2 - Glen Boyd
Who said I didn't like it? I liked "Love Chronicles" better though.
-Glen
3 - pork romeo
just listening to some of my favorite stewart tunes, Roads to Moscow playing at the moment. so i thought i would do a search and see what happened to him.
nice surprise he is releasing a new CD. thanks for the review. looking forward to it.
4 - Nicholas Waller
I largely agree with you about Al Stewart's broad career: I like his stuff on the seven albums up to and including Year of the Cat, and don't care much for most of what came after, apart from the odd excellent song or two (apart from Between the Wars, which I listened to a lot) and I'm looking forward to Sparks and hope it is a return to form.
Although, as you say, historical themes were quite big for him at one stage, he didn't start that way - only Manuscript (Zero She Flies) from his first four albums has much history element. Otherwise, they were either personal stories, or stories about the tangled love/sex lives of individuals (as in Life and Life Only or Mary Foster).
I only saw him once with his band in about 1980 but my brother saw him as an one-man act in the late 60s in a small folk club in Bristol, which he describes here.
5 - Julie in brittany
I can't believe you didn't give Between the Wars a mention. It's simply magnificent and you can't get much more historical than that album.
6 - Richard Horton
I have to echo Julie on Between The Wars. If you missed the historical storytelling you need to give that album a listen or three. To my mind it is Al's finest album period. (And his finest period album.)