Description
Yusuf / Cat Stevens – The Laughing Apple – Picture Disc Vinyl Record
The Laughing Apple reconnects Yusuf / Cat Stevens with the melodic directness and illustrated storytelling of his earliest work. Produced with Paul Samwell-Smith, who helped shape the classic Cat Stevens sound, the 2017 album combines newly written pieces with songs first attempted decades earlier. The result feels reflective rather than nostalgic: an older writer returning to unfinished ideas with greater clarity.
“Blackness of the Night” and “The Laughing Apple” revisit material from the late 1960s, while “See What Love Did to Me” and “Olive Hill” bring newer experience into the same acoustic world. Yusuf’s voice has deepened, but the phrasing remains gentle and immediately recognizable, supported by guitar-led arrangements that keep the words in front.
Family and moral imagination run through the album. “Grandsons,” “Mary and the Little Lamb,” and “You Can Do (Whatever)” use simple surfaces to address inheritance, choice, and responsibility. The songs often resemble fables, an effect reinforced by Yusuf’s own illustrations for the album.
“Mighty Peace,” “Northern Wind,” and “Don’t Blame Them” widen the emotional field without breaking the record’s intimate scale. The sequence closes with “I’m So Sleepy,” a small, disarming ending that completes the storybook atmosphere while reminding listeners of Yusuf’s gift for memorable, economical melody.
This limited picture-disc vinyl edition turns the artist’s visual world into the record itself. It contains the complete eleven-song album and is packaged as a collectible variant distinct from the standard black-vinyl release.
Brand new, never played and still sealed in the factory plastic
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