Cat Stevens - Foreigner

Released - July 1973

Genre - Folk

Producer - Cat Stevens

Selected Personnel - Cat Stevens (Vocals/Guitar/Piano/Keyboards/Synthesiser/Bass); Jean Roussel (Keyboards); Phil Upchurch (Guitar); Paul Martinez (Bass); Herbie Flowers (Bass); Bernard Purdie (Drums/Percussion); Gerry Conway (Drums/Percussion)

Standout Track - Foreigner Suite

As I've mentioned in my last couple of reviews for Cat Stevens's stuff, the man had yet to have made a bad album since his first undeniable classic in the form of 1970's Mona Bone Jakon. But nor had he made an album since then that had really pushed himself as an artist and made any real effort to do anything different or new. As yet, that hadn't been to the outright detriment of any of his work - every subsequent release continued to be a masterful collection of simple, heartfelt and catchy folk music, but by the time of 1972's Catch Bull At Four it was clear that this formula couldn't continue indefinitely. For the first time since 1969's New Masters, Steven released an album that, while it had its timeless songs, was composed of more than a fair share of forgettable filler material. Not only that, it showed the glimmer of new ideas in some places, with Stevens introducing synthesisers into his musical arsenal, albeit with subtlety rather than great flair. One definitely feels from Catch Bull At Four that another album recorded with exactly the same team behind it and mining exactly the same acoustic folk-based veins of inspiration, it would inevitably have felt like Cat Stevens had run out of ideas. Stevens was aware of this as anybody in his audience may have been, and felt that he would have to resort to drastic measures to rescue any sense of creative inspiration.

So it is that we have Foreigner, without a doubt the most unusual and atypical album Stevens released, and also one of his finest. It's unmatched elsewhere in his discography in terms of ambition, and for the most part achieves that ambition admirably, regardless of the hostile critical reception it received from the less open-minded sectors of his audience. The first thing Stevens did was to shed the two most crucial figures behind his transformation into one of the most popular and accomplished singer-songwriters of the early 70s, producer Paul Samwell-Smith and guitarist Alun Davies. Both would return for his next album, but for Stevens Foreigner needed to be a scorched earth policy that cut him off from everything he felt overly comfortable with, including his choice of collaborators. The next move was to immerse himself in a musical world he had previously never paid much attention to - the world of what he had termed "black music" as a child. Rather than making music that owed a debt to the principally white world of folk and rock and roll, Stevens now turned his attention to R&B, gospel and blues, with even reggae and funk proving to be key influences on the new album's sound. Even the instrumentation was radically different - the majority of the songs, particularly the album's epic centrpiece, the "Foreigner Suite," were built around keyboards rather than Stevens's go-to musical tool, the acoustic guitar. He had started incorporating keyboards more widely on Catch Bull At Four, but on Foreigner they are at the heart of music, while the majority of the guitars present are electric rather than acoustic.

If there's one major innovation that really stands out about Foreigner, though, it's that aforementioned title suite. If ever there was a way for Stevens to throw down the gauntlet and defiantly state that he was trying to do something very different to the short acoustic ballads of his previous work, it was by building an R&B album around an eighteen-minute multi-part suite. While the likes of Bob Dylan had experimented in lengthy, rambling poetic epics previously, it was rare for something like a side-long suite to exist outside the realms of prog rock, and for a folk singer to turn his hand to it must have been quite a shock. That he achieves it so magnificently is even more of a surprise. The "Foreigner Suite" is nothing short of magnificent - its lyrics are actually some of the simplest and most unaffected in his discography, being effectively just a very tender and heartfelt love song, and it's perhaps a surprise that such a lengthy and complex piece of music isn't something that tackles a grander subject. But Stevens sets his declaration of love to a gloriously complex and rich backing that moves from one musical idea to another seamlessly, taking in a staggering range of musical influences and time signatures and styles. It starts with a brief excerpt from a very simple, piano-based ballad before segueing into a propulsive, upbeat R&B number ("I'm over to that sunnyside road,") replete with the gospel strains of the backing singers. Later still, the reggae twang of Phil Upchurch's guitar introduces a new mood and a lengthy instrumental jam before the return of the slow, portentous piano ballad that opened the song. The final minutes of the piece are given over to one of the most beautiful songs Stevens has ever written as a jaunty piano part and increasingly frenetic guitar bounces along to his jubilant cries of "Heaven must have programmed you." The chord sequence and melody of these final minutes, strangely enough, are almost identical to Coldplay's "Viva La Vida," to the extent that Stevens ended up joining Joe Satriani in filing a lawsuit against them for the song, both of them competing in claiming that their song was the inspiration.

It's a magnificent piece of music, startlingly new and alien and exciting to anyone familiar with Stevens's earlier work, and as rich in emotion as any song he'd written up to that point. But the spirit of experimentation and of musical diversity wasn't confined to that one sprawling epic - the short collection of songs on the second side are similarly fresh and exciting. "The Hurt," which ended up being the album's only minor hit despite being one of its less interesting tracks, is another upbeat R&B-style track in the vein of the second section of the "Foreigner Suite," while "How Many Times" feels closer in spirit to the older style of Cat Stevens ballad. There's a vague gospel-blues spirit to it, but essentially it just finds Stevens at his piano singing tenderly about lost love, and it's cosily familiar to the dieheard fan who would by this stage have perhaps felt very confused by how much their favourite artist had changed with his latest output. Just to remind that comforted listener that things are still being done on his terms rather than theirs, Stevens follows it up with "Later," which looks to the traditions of late-60s funk for its inspirations. With its infectious bass groove around a single chord and its muted guitar riff and bluesy piano, it's one of the coolest and most danceable songs Stevens ever wrote, and the most concise example on the record of why Stevens's apparent gamble to take inspiration from black music rather than white was inspired rather than risky. As the 70s wore on, more and more artists would come to experiment with black musical styles as traditional rock and roll grew increasingly tired, and here Stevens, along with figures like Paul Simon, finds himself at the vanguard of that tradition. Finally, "100 I Dream" is a perfectly enjoyable R&B-inflected closer that feels suitably uplifting but fails to create a truly compelling or memorable melody so suffers a little in comparison to the highs of what has already been achieved on the album up to that point.

Ultimately, it's perhaps inevitable that Foreigner would end up being a one-time diversion for Stevens - no doubt if this new style he immersed himself in became his de facto way of making music he would again have quickly burned himself out, maybe even faster than before given how unfamiliar he was with the musical styles he was moving into. Any commitment he may have had to making more albums in a similar style would no doubt have been dashed further by the aforementioned critical backlash to Foreigner - while it sold well, it wasn't received favourably by the music press of the time. Stevens responded not by sticking to his guns but by admitting defeat and reuniting with Samwell-Smith and Davies for his next album, a return to traditional folk songwriting. Still, the quality on that next album would feel reinvigorated and it would be far more consistent than the patchy Catch Bull At Four, so his work on this album certainly gave him back a sense of creative freedom and inspiration he had been lacking recently. That he managed to make a genuinely phenomenal and excitingly fresh album in the process is an added bonus we can all be grateful for.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Cat Stevens.

1. Foreigner Suite

2. The Hurt

3. How Many Times

4. Later

5. 100 I Dream