Catch Bull at Four

Product Information

The album was recorded in May, 1972 at The Manor Studio, Oxfordshire; Château d'Hérouville, Hérouville, France, and Morgan Studios, London

Jeremy Taylor – Spanish guitar, (assisted in translating "O' Caritas" into the Latin language used in the song). [5]All told, I think that Catch Bull At Four is more interesting than Teaser, though tune for tune it is far less memorable. With Mona Bone Jakon and Tea for the Tillerman I was content to bask in gorgeous melody and orchestration. The economy and simplicity of Teaser I admired more than I liked. But what could come next, if Cat continued in this direction? Though Catch Bull doesn't answer this question definitively, I think it represents Cat's challenge to himself to transcend poetic eccentricity and come out front with a clearer, more unified, more emotionally direct expression of what he is about. I hope he continues to wrestle with this challenge, even if its outcome is more truth and less beauty. The album’s title derives from Kuòān Shīyuǎn’s Ten Bulls, a narrative representing the ten stages of Zen enlightenment. This clearly speaks to Cat’s sense of the progress he was making upon his own inner journey, which in many ways was at odds with the album’s tremendous commercial success. allmusic ((( Catch Bull at Four > Charts & Awards > Billboard Albums )))". allmusic.com . Retrieved 24 February 2012. Album Search: Cat Stevens – Catch Bull at Four" (ASP) (in German). Media Control . Retrieved 24 February 2012. [ dead link]

Cat Stevens, today known as Yusuf, marked the 50th anniversary of his first three Island/A&M albums (1970's Mona Bone Jakon and Tea for the Tillerman, and 1971's Teaser and the Firecat) with a variety of releases including expansive super deluxe box sets. For 1972's Catch Bull at Four, the troubadour is taking a distinctly slimmed-down approach. On December 2, Island and A&M will reissue Stevens' classic album on CD, LP, and digitally, newly remastered from the original tapes but with no additional material. Side two contains the meat of the album. The mood here is of pessimism, terror, apocalyptic foreboding, a region of Cat's personality that we have not been shown so directly before, and his success in revealing it describes a very promising avenue for future artistic exploration. "18th Avenue (Kansas City Nightmare)," the opener, is the album's most ambitious cut and in every way its best. A vision of insanity and physical and mental deterioration, it accumulates the specific but disjunctive images of a nightmare that makes no literal sense other than forcefully embodying a premonition of metaphysical collapse. The music is also disjunctive, but brilliantly so. In the cut's extended instrumental break, Bel Newman contributes one of his best string arrangements ever, and there is stunning percussion work by Cat and Gerry Conway. Cat Stevens’ 1972 album, Catch Bull At Four, is getting a newly remastered edition for its 50th anniversary. The title, which marked the singer-songwriter’s most successful chart album, is available on vinyl for the first time since its original release. Catch Bull At Four, which includes such favorites as “Sitting” and “Can’t Keep It In,” has also returned to CD for the first time since its reissue in 2000 and the new remaster is also available for streaming in both standard and stunning hi-resolution audio. All formats were released Dec. 2, 2022, via A&M/UMe. The title follows the expanded 50th anniversary editions of Yusuf / Cat Stevens’ seminal albums Mona Bone Jakon, Tea for the Tillerman, and Teaser and the Firecat.

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