More of the Music of Cat Stevens
- An original UK Island pressing that was doing practically everything right
- It’s bigger, more dynamic, more lively, more present and just plain more exciting than most of what we played
- This British pressing can show you the sweeter, tubier Midrange Magic that is the hallmark of all the best Cat Stevens records
- CBAF is an exceptionally well recorded album full of wonderful tunes, one that we feel should definitely be more popular with audiophiles
- “Though some of the lyrics retain Cat’s fanciful imagery… he shows a new emotional directness, especially on side two, the albums ‘down’ side. This is reflected in Cat’s singing, which becomes more assured and more emotive with each album.” – Rolling Stone
- This has been a title in which one stamper wins our shootouts for more than a decade, but this time around we found another stamper for side one, a pleasant surprise I must say
If you’re familiar with what the better Hot Stamper pressings of Tea for the Tillerman, Teaser and the Firecat or Mona Bone Jakon can sound like — amazing is the word that comes to mind — then you should easily be able to imagine how good the better copies of Catch Bull At Four sounds.
All the ingredients for a Classic Cat Stevens album were in place for this release, which came out in 1972, about a year after Teaser and the Firecat. His wonderful guitar player, Alun Davies, is still in the band, and Paul Samwell-Smith is still producing as brilliantly as ever.
There’s no shortage of deep, well-defined bass either, allowing the more dynamic songs to really come alive. The ones that get loud without becoming hard or harsh are the ones that tend to get everything else right at the lower volumes.
Tubey Magical acoustic guitar reproduction is superb on the better copies of this recording. Simply phenomenal amounts of Tubey Magic can be heard on every strum, along with richness, body and harmonic coherency that have all but disappeared from modern recordings (and especially from modern remasterings).