In a time of increasing climate instability, earthquakes, wars and new global tensions, Yusuf / Cat Stevens invites us to take a deep breath and revive hope for a world that embraces the lost land of truisms and unadulterated youth; a world we all lived and danced in at one time or another. His songs have the breathtaking ability to vividly transport us back to a time when "...all things were big and our friends were small." Yusuf's music and words do not ask us to become intellectual, but to simply listen and immerse ourselves in more human stories - where there may be a happy ending. "King of a Land" is the seventeenth album by Yusuf / Cat Stevens. It contains 12 brand new songs. The title track tells the story of a little boy (and his playful ginger cat) who imagines the good he would do if he were king of a land - a place where he should be or "Woodbee". Childlike faith and dreams are brought back within reach of our auditory sensuality as he takes us on a new journey. His voice, words and breathtaking melodies draw you in from the start and leave you waiting at the gates of a much more beautiful world than the one we currently inhabit. It's been almost 60 years since the 17-year-old "Cat" burst onto the pop scene with hits like "Matthew and Son" and "I'm Gonna Get Me a Gun." She wrote some of the most memorable hits like "The First Cut Is The Deepest" and "Here Comes My Baby." It was the "Swinging 60's" where pop artists came and went. Some of those chart hits came from singer/songwriter solo artists like Bob Dylan, Donovan, Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon, few of whom are as creatively active today. It was the young Cat Stevens who released his first studio album, Matthew and Son, on Decca's exciting new Deram label. This was not a one-off album, but the beginning of a long musical adventure that, incredibly, continues to the present day. The hunger and drive to write, record and entertain is remarkably still there. It has not diminished. "King of a Land" is an epic work, timeless, in more ways than one. The first sessions took place in 2011 at Berlin's Hansa Studios (where David Bowie and U2's most important albums were also recorded). From there, the recording locations changed over the years from ICP Studios in Brussels to La Fabrique in Provence in the south of France. Additional overdubs and a 60-piece orchestra were recorded at Air and Angel studios in London. Some key tracks were originally recorded in Yusuf's own garage-housed home studio in Dubai, which he calls "Dubville." "For most of the songs, I played at home in the garage and recorded everything - it's as close as you can get to my head," Yusuf says. Overseeing the creative process was Yusuf's longtime (since Mona Bone Jakon) producer and later co-producer Paul Samwell-Smith, formerly of Yardbird. For the recordings, Paul and Yusuf assembled a top-notch team of guest musicians to enhance the songs, including bassist Bruce Lynch (who first collaborated with him on 1974's Buddha And The Chocolate Box), keyboardist Peter Vettese (Jethro Tull, Bee Gees, Simple Minds), and drummer Russ Kunkel (Joni Mitchell, Carol King, James Taylor, CSN&Y), as well as his familiar two-piece band of Kwame Yeboah and Eric Appapoulay. Of his co-producer, he says, "Paul is brilliant; he's a great stylist," says Yusuf, "he understands me and knows where I want to go. He lets me go there, and sometimes he shadows me and challenges me. But mostly Paul analyzes what I want to do and gives me the space to do it" The album is full of extraordinary surprises, "Pagan Run" comes with glorious and unexpected hard rock intensity. "When I picked up the guitar and found this riff, the song started, and then it just evolved. The lyrics are a reiteration of the otherworldly race I've been on," he says. "How messed up I was trying to figure out the riddles of life, what it all meant. I was in a very ignorant state, extremely superstitious and deathly afraid of invisible forces, of things that could suddenly appear and hurt you - or worse. In the end, I learned about the higher power that has everything under control. Yusuf's faith is vividly expressed on the album in the tender acoustic ballad "He Is True" to the driving Phil Spector gospel vibe of "Highness" and the artful, atmospheric "Son Of Mary," which impressively tells the story of Jesus and Mary in concise verse. "This song encapsulates what I believe is one of the most complex stories of a character in religious and spiritual history," Yusuf explains. The Boy Who Knew How To Climb Walls transports the listener to Palestine before the partition of the country and tells the story of two close friends who grew up before the outbreak of war, one of whom eventually buried the other. The song closes with the haunting, repeated refrain, "I can see him now floating on the air." The album's fantastic artwork is by award-winning Canadian children's book illustrator Peter H. Reynolds, continuing a collaboration with Yusuf that began in 2021 with the NY Times best-selling Peace Train picture book. In addition to the gorgeous cover art, Peter Reynolds also created illustrations for each song that accompany the album's lyrics in the booklet. Due to the success of this collaboration, Yusuf was eager to have Peter work with him on King. "I've always loved cartoons, and when I saw Peter's style, I loved it. He illustrated most of the songs and also the cover. In one of my favorite songs, "How Good It Feels," a kid is lifted up by the hand of this gentle giant: "I know what it feels like to have a hand come down and pick me up off the floor." I remember my childhood running around the fair in Battersea and suddenly losing sight of my mother. I was alone and crying, and then suddenly she emerged from the crowd and picked me up." "One of the things I've enjoyed doing lately, re-releasing classic albums like Tea for the Tillerman and Teaser and the Firecat, was being involved in the design and development of images for the box sets. I sort of fell back into that child's world, which I made very, very clear on the cover of this album. In other parts of "King of a Land," the frustration with the state of the modern world is clear: "Train On A Hill" and its stunningly beautiful, classical arrangement show Yusuf's thwarted "Peace Train," chained and immobile, ".... "cause the earth just isn't fair." Another catchy tune with its rolling Travelling Wilburys-inspired groove is "All Nights, All Days," which has an Americana-country feel. "I like to embrace different genres, "All Nights...' just felt like it was born for it - but it could have easily ended up somewhere else, ha ha!" The lyrics rage against "the rich taxing the poor" and suggest, with wry humor, that "these leaders should be locked up in London Zoo." "That's where a lot of them belong, let's face it," Yusuf laughs. "The only way we can live in peace is to get rid of most of them. Not all of them, maybe. But most of them ..." Interestingly, the final mixing of "King of a Land" took place in Henley-on-Thames, at George Harrison's private studio located in his former home, Friar Park. "We had the great privilege of being at Friar Park," says Yusuf, "and being among the first outsiders to enter that control room and mix an album. George Harrison had an immense spiritual influence on me from the beginning. He pioneered certain thoughts and ideas that reached far east, and that was very important. So if you listen to some of the songs on this album, you can hear a kind of spirit of George." Not coincidentally, the album is also being released on Dark Horse Records, Harrison's own label, which is run by his son Dhani. The dreamy pop of "Another Night In The Rain" (with elements of Peter Gabriel and the Beatles) paints a picture of an unfortunate figure on the road, getting drenched while somberly contemplating his prospects. "It's a young guy who's totally disappointed in himself and doesn't know what to take out of this life," a kind of urban tragedy that reinforces the usual adolescent insecurities. "After I wrote it," he adds, "I realized there was another voice that was graciously optimistic, offering the boy ideas on how to find his way through the anxieties of teenage life - symbolized by rain. So it's not Father And Son, but it's very similar in the sense that there's a discussion." The album's quintessential track, "How Good It Feels," evolves from quiet acoustic guitar arpeggios to a full-bodied orchestration inspired by Tchaikovsky, arranged by Nick Ingham and recorded at AIR Studios. The song has its roots in a melody that first came to Yusuf's mind in 1968. "This is my opus," he says. "It took me so long to write this song. I've always been inspired by classical composers. There's an excerpt from Swan Lake that inspired me to write the melody fifty-seven years ago. I decided to be very honest, so I put Tchaikovsky's theme twice in the song. The final track is one of the album's strongest earworms, "Take The World Apart," which is expected to lead the series of singles in advance of the release of "King of a Land," scheduled for June 2023. The accompanying animated lyric video, created by Peter Reynolds, is destined to excite. It makes a delightful introduction to the album's powerful, childlike theme and matches the joy and optimism that Yusuf's music inherently evokes. Yusuf / Cat Stevens has used all his years as a composer and musical icon; a prince of poetic storytelling. He has assembled a mosaic of musical delights that is as stirring a listening experience as any of his earlier classics. This album shows Yusuf at the peak of his creative powers. He is not bound to any particular genre, it doesn't matter if the style of music is pop, country, rock, folk, spiritual or classical. It's all there to bring the lyrics straight to your heart. Close your eyes, turn off the world for 42 minutes and get ready for your encounter with "King of a Land".