ALBUM REVIEW: Yusuf Islam 'Tell 'Em I'm Gone'

Rating:

Yusuf Islam, ‘Cat Stevens’ to those that fear change, returns this year with a new offering of original and cover songs. Accompanied by some top-draw musicians like Richard Thompson and co-produced by the busiest producer in rock, Rick Rubin Tell ‘Em I’m Gone is the third album he’s released since his return after rejecting the shallow music business in favour of Islam and a quest for spiritual quietude. He’s been back a while, but contentment still sets in when I hear that familiar voice. I was raised on staples like ‘Wild World’, ‘Oh Very Young’ and the interpretation of the old hymn that made it okay to not just mouth the words at Sunday School, ‘Morning Has Broken’, and though this album isn’t familiarly ‘Cat’, Yusuf still strums a chord that rings with the classics.

The album is rooted in a very easy-going blues. Self-penned and reflective, ‘I Was Born in Babylon’ and ‘Big Boss Man’, a 1960’s twelve-bar classic, are sung as if recorded in smoke-filled blues halls off the Delta. They are cool, in the truest sense of the word. ‘Big Boss Man’ seeps with a beautiful shuffle, distorted mouth organ, crisp organ and gorgeous, effortless harmonies. It is clear the Yusuf handles the blues, though at times, the affected comfort-blanket of an American accent slips to reveal the middle-class Londoner. It’s a common problem with Englanders singing the blues, and gives us a peek behind the curtain in a rather jarring way, but Yusuf is not the first great to fall victim to this.

Whilst this album stands alone as a very listenable piece of work, there isn’t so much classic ‘Cat’, as he favours a more rootsy approach to most of the songs on the album, but Cat fans will not be disappointed. Hearing ‘Dying to Live’, I was surprised to hear such an unmistakable Cat-sounding song wedged in between all the blues, and even more surprised when I realised what the song was: an Edgar Winter classic. Yusuf does nothing with the track; it is very nearly a carbon copy of the original, but it could easily be a rerecording of one of his own. He reworks it with his vocals alone, with delicate vocal ornaments that only he can produce, giving the song’s meaning much more gravity. There are certainly less theatrics in Yusuf’s approach to music than Winter’s, and he owns the track with his humble approach.

Yes, the unfamiliar is certainly laced with the familiar. Considering his rebirth, his reinvention of the old stage persona, “Doors’, the final track, is an apt closer. The song’s theme deals with opening new doors after old ones have been closed, but interestingly it is classically ‘Cat’. He may have rejected the business in the past, and though he is asking everyone to Tell ‘Em I’m Gone—perhaps subconsciously addressing the fans that still call him Cat—he in no way rejects the pre-conversion Yusuf Islam. Everything listened, Yusuf is certainly still the man, and ‘Doors’, aside from being an thematically appropriate closer, is a beautiful track.