Yusuf / Cat Stevens' "Joyous" (Rolling Stone) 'The Laughing Apple' Out Today

SEPTEMBER 15, 2017 - (London/New York, NY) - Yusuf / Cat Stevens has released his highly anticipated new album, The Laughing Apple, out on his Cat-O-Log Records label exclusively through Decca Records. The Laughing Apple shows the influential singer-songwriter in prime musical and lyrical form, garnering early praise from the Associated Press, Rolling Stone, NPR Music, The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly and more.

Entertainment Weekly calls Yusuf's songwriting on The Laughing Apple "timeless," while NPR Music says it "magnifies the philosophical reflection that's marked his music since the beginning." The New York Times calls it "an open-hearted embrace of his past selves."

Listen to "Blackness Of The Night," which finds Yusuf lamenting the plight of modern refugees in an elegiac update on one of his earliest protest songs: https://youtu.be/RJ7vGFWxLeU

Combining newly-written songs with reinvented versions of tracks from Yusuf's 1967 catalogue, The Laughing Apple celebrates some of his earliest material, presenting the songs in beautiful new arrangements. Yusuf produced The Laughing Apple with Paul Samwell-Smith, the original producer behind Yusuf's classics like 1970's Tea For Tillerman. The new album also marks the return of Yusuf's longtime guitarist Alun Davies.

Yusuf's music -- including classic songs like "Wild World," "Moonshadow," "Peace Train," "Morning Has Broken" and "Oh Very Young" -- has touched the lives of millions around the world. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame in 2014.

PRAISE FOR YUSUF / CAT STEVENS & THE LAUGHING APPLE:
"A new album that sounds like old Cat Stevens with even more light and wisdom than before." - Associated Press

"Joyous...bridges the artist's present and past." - Rolling Stone

"Magnifies the philosophical reflection that's marked his music since the beginning." - NPR Music

"An open-hearted embrace of his past selves." - NY Times

"The most quintessentially sounding 'Cat Stevens' record since he returned to writing and recording." - LA Times

"Yusuf's timeless songwriting still yields plenty of surprises." - Entertainment Weekly

"At times, The Laughing Apple sounds like a children's album, but that's part of the same comforting innocence that was central to 'Moonshadow' and 'Oh Very Young' and other Cat Stevens hits from the '70s." - Philadelphia Inquirer

"There's never a moment where he seems less than sincere and committed...Yusuf's most satisfying album since his return to popular music in 2006." - AllMusic

"Hearing his voice stretch skyward encourages listeners to surrender to infinity, to accept that all of the particulars that we obsess over mean nothing in the face of the universe." - Consequence Of Sound

TRACKLIST:
Blackness of the Night
See What Love Did to Me
The Laughing Apple
Olive Hill
Grandsons
Mighty Peace
Mary and the Little Lamb
You Can Do (Whatever)!
Northern Wind (Death of Billy the Kid)
Don't Blame Them
I'm So Sleepy

Order The Laughing Apple here: https://lnk.to/TheLaughingApplePR

MORE INFO:
http://shorefire.com/client/yusuf-cat-stevens