73: TEASER AND THE FIRECAT | CAT STEVENS
We all have those albums that we truly grew up with from our parent’s collection. This is my most favorite of my father’s. He must have bought it in the early 70s when it came out. My memories come from the later 70s and especially road trips in the Vanagon in the 80s. Teaser is a perfect balance of rockin then ballads. The known tracks ‘Moon Shadow’ and ‘Peace Train’ are my least favorite on the album. Many great album are like that. The deep cuts are the real shit.
William Ruhlmann at Allmusic writes: Even as a serious-minded singer/songwriter, Cat Stevens never stopped being a pop singer at heart, and with Teaser and the Firecat he reconciled his philosophical interests with his pop instincts. Basically, Teaser's songs came in two modes: gentle ballads that usually found Stevens and second guitarist Alun Davies playing delicate lines over sensitive love lyrics, and up-tempo numbers on which the guitarists strummed away and thundering drums played in stop-start rhythms. There were also more exotic styles, such as the Greek-styled "Rubylove," with its twin bouzoukis and a verse sung in Greek, and "Tuesday's Dead," with its Caribbean feel. Stevens seemed to have worked out some of his big questions, to the point of wanting to proselytize on songs like "Changes IV" and "Peace Train," both stirring tunes in which he urged social and spiritual improvement. Meanwhile, his love songs had become simpler and more plaintive. And while there had always been a charming, childlike quality to some of his lyrics, there were songs here that worked as nursery rhymes, and these were among the album's most memorable tracks and its biggest hits: "Moonshadow" and "Morning Has Broken," the latter adapted from a hymn with words by English author Eleanor Farjeon. The overall result was an album that was musically more interesting than ever, but lyrically dumbed-down. Stevens continued to look for satisfaction in romance, despite its disappointment, but he found more fulfillment in a still-unspecified religious pursuit that he was ready to tout to others. And they were at least nominally ready to listen: the album produced three hit singles and just missed topping the charts. Tea for the Tillerman may have been the more impressive effort, but Teaser and the Firecat was the Cat Stevens album that gave more surface pleasures to more people, which in pop music is the name of the game.
Wiki: The album contains 10 songs, including the hits "Morning Has Broken", "Moonshadow" and "Peace Train". It is also the title of a children's book written and illustrated by Stevens. The story features the title characters from the album cover, top-hatted young Teaser and his pet, Firecat, who attempt to put the moon back in its place after it falls from the sky. Published in 1972, the book has been out of print since the mid-1970s.
The album was a commercial success, surpassing the heights achieved by Stevens' previous album, Tea for the Tillerman, reaching both the UK and US Top 3 and also spending fifteen weeks at the top of the Australian charts, becoming the biggest-selling album of the country in 1972.
In 1977, an animated version, narrated by Spike Milligan, using the song "Moonshadow", was a segment in Fantastic Animation Festival. In November 2008, a "deluxe edition" was released featuring a second disc of demos and live recordings.