Past, Present And Future (studio album)
by Al Stewart

This is a very good album... his best in my opinion. Yes some of it is obviously a product of its times. Post World War Two Blues makes him sound like a Scottish amalgam of Don McLean and Jim Croce... how seventies is that?... but it's still a good song. What really surprised me in listening to this again today after not listening to it for years, how much The Decemberists and even Neutral Milk Hotel were obviously influenced by this album. If you like those artists, give this a listen. Yes the vocals are poppier and folkier, but if you can get by that, I think you'll like it...The second side of the vinyl version is particularly superb. Roads to Moscow is a classic. Nostradamus is not far behind. Terminal Eyes owes a lot to John Lennon but also shows just how many musical styles Stewart can master and makes for an appropriate foil between the two long acoustic ballads. This is where Al Stewart shows is true Celtic bard (or more accurately, fili) abilities. For people like me with a majority of Celtic ancestry the allure is strong. Don't underestimate the anti-Celtic prejudice in the bones of those who don't have much recent Celtic ancestry especially among Anglo-Saxons, who have been trained culturally, whether they really know it or not, to reject in knee-jerk fashion all things Celtic. This goes a long way to explaining the criticism of Al Stewart in the minds on non-Celtic critics. Maybe as a result of that, he moves away from his Celtic roots more and more on each album after this one, never again reaching as high and becomes, if not complacent, then content in his pop stardom. Contrary to popular opinion, I think the Alan Parsons engineering of his work on albums after this one did his music no favours, just his bank account.