The rich, comforting voice remains, but Cat Stevens is no more. In his stead there is Yusuf, offering us An Other Cup, a record that bears proud comparison to Stevens’ classic Tea For The Tillerman.
‘Midday (Avoid City After Dark)’ is an elegant meander into Yusuf’s world, sweet pitter-patter rhythms and orchestral oomph underpinning this paean to life’s simple pleasures. This purity is equally evident in ‘Heaven/Where True Love Goes’, elevating the sentiments expressed from the saccharine to the sublime. Here the spirit wanders disembodied until it finds The Other, able to clothe itself in flesh at last. To resort to cliché, he has found himself.
Popular music that subscribes so directly to the sacred can appear at best earnest, at worst pompous and over-bearing. Not so this record. Possessed of a languid grace An Other Cup wears its spiritual garb lightly. Encased in delicate orchestral arrangements, these folk, rock and easy listening epistles carefully tread their path, occasionally glimpsing vertiginous depths, allowing us a peek over the precipice. The wisdom here is commonplace, but no less powerful for it. ‘One Day At A Time’ urges us to embrace life and love, whilst ‘I Think I See The Light’ suggests a life without faith is a lonely life, no life at all. In the canon of rock spirituals, An Other Cup is a Heavens-questing triumph to equal Richard and Linda Thompson’s Pour Down Like Silver. Divine.