Yusuf Islam: An Other Cup : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Back in the seventies, Cat Stevens was a bearded guy who tagged pop-friendly folkie melodies to barely sufferable hippie-isms. Then he became a devout Muslim, changed his name to Yusuf Islam and stopped making pop records. An Other Cup, his first pop album in twenty-eight years, finds his sound mellowed but still recognizable: Appropriately for a guy once pegged as an English James Taylor, now he sounds like late-period Taylor, only doofier, combining dreamy melodies and slo-mo strums on songs like "One Day at a Time" and dropping bright adult pop like "When Butterflies Leave." His skills haven't eroded: "Heaven/Where True Love Goes" sounds like it could have been the theme song to a family-friendly Eighties sitcom; elsewhere, Islam offers cheesed-out sweetness such as "Green Fields, Golden Sands." Sufferable for sure, but hard to recommend.