Al Stewart - Year of the Cat (Rhino Reserve)

Rhino Reserve gives Al Stewart's Year of the Cat a fresh vinyl home, welcoming back the 1976 album that turned a bookish folk singer into a late-night radio fixture.

Glasgow-born Stewart had spent roughly a decade building a cult following out of the London folk scene, writing songs that read like history lessons set to melody. Reuniting with producer Alan Parsons after Modern Times, he polished that literate streak into something lush and radio-ready without sanding off its curiosity.

The title track is the main event, a six-minute reverie that drifts from a lonely piano figure into acoustic guitar, strings and a smoky saxophone break, its lyrics wandering through a dreamlike encounter in a faraway market town. "On the Border" brings flashes of Spanish guitar to a tale of smugglers and uneasy frontiers, while "Lord Grenville" opens the record with a seafaring ballad steeped in Elizabethan history. "Midas Shadow" slips in quietly and lingers long after it ends.

Parsons gives every song a glossy, spacious finish, but Stewart's storytelling keeps the album grounded in character and place.

Fifty years on, Year of the Cat still feels like the perfect record for a rainy evening, a glass of something good and a long, wandering thought.