A carefully selected batch of songs taken from the singer/songwriter's 40-year career and recorded in an intimate setting shows him in a reflective mood.
This album, released 50 years ago today, marked a return to the simpler style of Cat Stevens' earlier albums. No song ran much over five minutes, the arrangements were sparer and featured more acoustic guitar, and the lyrics did not take off into discursive ruminations about the state of the universe. It was very much as if Stevens was deliberately trying to make an album like Teaser and the Firecat, his commercial and artistic apex. - William Ruhlmann