Teaser and the Firecat is the fifth studio album by Cat Stevens, released in October 1971. It was recorded between July 1970 and March 1971, and features 10 songs, including the hits "Morning Has Broken", "Moonshadow" and "Peace Train". 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 and winning Biggest Selling LP at the 1972 King of Pop Awards. It also shares a title with a children's book written and illustrated by Stevens, which focuses on the characters from the album cover.
Overview
Stevens wrote and illustrated a 1972 children's book which features the titular 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. The book has been out of print and rare since the mid-1970s.
In a contemporary review for Rolling Stone magazine, music critic Timothy Crouse praised Stevens' distinctive musical style and introspective songs such as "Tuesday's Dead" and "The Wind", but felt that he lacks Van Morrison's evocative quality and James Taylor's refined lyrics: "Cat has become a dependable artist, a good artist, but he appears to be one of those composers who does not develop, who holds no surprises." Croiuse described the singles "Ruby Love" and "Peace Train" as being "infectious but basically dreck" and attributed their success to their production values, although he acknowledged that "Rubylove" "as a pleasant enough tune" and that "Peace Train" "delivers its simple-minded message in an appropriately childish tone." On the other hand, he wrote of the single "Moonshadow" that it's "a simple, unadorned song whose beauty lies in its mystery" and said that "Morning Is Broken" is "the only lyric on the album that makes a really sophisticated, coherent statement about the world", describing that song as "a gorgeous hymn."
In a retrospective five-star review, AllMusic's William Ruhlmann found the album more simplistic lyrically and musically entertaining than Tea for the Tillerman (1970): "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."
It was voted number 539 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000).
Musicologist Franco Fabbri described "Rubylove" as "the first notable English pop song with 'Mediterranean' flavor that doesn't sound Arabic" and also as "the first 'exotic' song related to a nation, a culture, that wasn't part of the British Empire.
↑Molanphy, Chris (12 February 2021). "The AC/DC Rule Edition". Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia (Podcast). Slate. Retrieved 3 February 2024.
↑Fabbri, Franco (2013). "Paint It Black, Cat: Rock, Pop and the Mediterranean". In Plastino, Goffredo (ed.). Mediterranean Mosaic. Taylor & Francis. pp.44–46. ISBN9781136707766.
