4 Out Of 5 Stars
and Teaser and the Firecat
, Cat Stevens began to show the mental strains of stardom though the music on Catch Bull at Four
.
He started off with his usual meditative style with the Top 40 single
"Sitting" and letting out a joyful cry with "Can't Keep It In," but the
second half found him wishing he could get aboard a UFO and get away
from everything in "Freezing Steel." Finally, as he sings in the
war-torn walk through "Ruins," Stevens cries for the lost paradise of
Eden and wonders where we all went wrong.
In the old side one and two days of vinyl, the happy was side one, the sad was side two. Stevens seemed to intentionally break these emotions into half here, walking you into his dilemmas after hooking you with his typical sounds one the first side. The lovely fairy tale that is "The Boy With The Moon and Stars on His Head" would be disillusioned by the deeply sad woman of "Sweet Scarlet." "Ah, but the song carries on," Stevens sings to Scarlet, even though he sounds more pained than ever before.
The music is still beautiful, despite the anguish that has begun to creep in. The urgency of some of the songs (like "Ruins") pushes Stevens more than he had done before, which means there are no peacemakers like "Morning Has Broken" to be found here. And by the next Cat Stevens album, Foreigner
,
it was obvious Stevens felt he could no longer relate to what he was
doing and that he believed himself to be turning more and more into an
outsider. "Catch Bull at Four" is the album that shows Cat as he
started trying to navigate that space.
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