Al Stewart | A Beach Full of Shells

According to VHI.com, “Year of the Cat was an unqualified hit, selling over a million copies and spawning the Top Ten title single. Time Passages duplicated both feats but Stewart’s creativity dried up soon afterwards.” How little attention that particular reviewer must be paying! I would suggest they give his 1995 release Between the Wars a listen, especially the songs “Sampan,” “A League of Notions,” and “Laughing into 1939.” They should also give his new release, A Beach Full of Shells, some consideration.

Here again Al is mixing his vast knowledge of history with his skills as a singer/songwriter .
No, these records are not for everyone, but I don’t think "everyone" is visiting my website and checking out my music picks. Many remember Al’s Past Present and Future LP (from the seventies), which featured songs about such subjects as the prophecies of Nostradamus and the life of a soldier resisting the Nazi invasion of Russia. Many will remember “On the Border” (from Year of the Cat) about the Spanish Civil War.

Al is certainly not your typical singer/songwriter and his unique songs would perhaps be merely academic exercises if he weren’t so good at writing and singing them.

My personal picks for standouts on A Beach Full of Shells would be “Mr. Lear,” “Royal Courtship” (in which he amusingly writes the same verse three times using different clever word choices), “Somewhere in England 1915,” and “My Egyptian Couch.” The latter describes some of his ancestors of a few generations ago wearing what were for them the latest clothes and staring out from a photograph. It is Al’s frequent musings about time and the way we relate to it that interests me most. Remember these words?

It was late in December, the sky turned to snow
All ‘round the day was going down slow
Night like a river beginning to flow
I felt the beat of my mind go
Drifting into time passages.
There’s something back there that you left behind
Oh, time passages.

From “Merlin’s Time”:

I think of you now
As a dream that I had long ago
in a kingdom lost to time

from “Laughing into 1939”:

The party draws them in
It breathes and moves
To a life its own
In its arms it’s gathering all time

Now the girl and the beach and the train
and the ship are all gone
And the calendar up on the wall says it’s ninety years on
(“Somewhere in England 1915”)

So they look from the photographs
and they’re curious now,
wondering how we turned out
Let’s say like the Chinese adage
We’re living our lives in interesting times
(“My Egyptian Couch”)

Visit Al’s website and you’ll see that, contrary to what VH1.com might print, there are many people who know that Al Stewart is still alive and well and doing very special work. I might add that the sound quality on A Beach Full of Shells is exceptional. Recording at the legendary Capitol Studios in Hollywood was worth every penny, even moreso if this fine CD somehow manages to sell several hundred thousand copies!

*Click here to read two of Steve Forbert's own "Time Passages".

Originally posted to SteveForbert.com in June 2006.