Magical history tours have been Al Stewart's trademark since the early 1970s, when he switched from writing about his own romantic turmoil to a wider view of the world and its rich cast of characters and events. While his 1976 international hit single, "Year of the Cat," was tied to no specific time, the albums surrounding it combined finely drawn character studies and detailed settings that ranged across continents and centuries, forming the template of history mixed with mystery for Al's subsequent recordings.
Everything changes with time - except basic human motivations. Sparks of Ancient Light, Al's latest collection of songs (following 2005's A Beach Full Of Shells), spans at least 2500 years of history in its tales of exotic locations and situations, all tied to an underlying theme of "certainly and uncertainty." Something's happening in each of these songs, a sense of change and movement beneath the sometimes sedate, sometimes dramatic facades. The larger context isn't always obvious, but the emotions behind the action are always recognizable - love, greed, wanderlust, jealousy, complacency, curiosity, regret, hope.
With winningly varied arrangements mixing folk, rock, classical and jazz, and immaculate production from multiple-Grammy-winning guitarist Laurence Juber (formerly of Paul McCartney's Wings), the CD both starts and ends with songs set in 1896. The opening "Lord Salisbury" examines Great Britain's prime minister flinching from the oncoming events threatening his policy of "splendid isolationism," while the protagonist of the "Like William McKinley" finale awaits the rush of progress with calm resignation. In between those bookends, we are shown "(A Child's View of) The Eisenhower Years," a bouncy evocation of post-World War II optimism; a freaked-out Elvis Presley undergoing a religious revelation as he witnesses Josef Stalin's face morphing into Jesus Christ in a desert cloud formation (true story!) in "Elvis at the Wheel"; an international con man hoodwinking the well-to-do who embrace him as their latest diversion ("Sleepwalking"); and Hanno the Navigator (in the same-named song), sailing from Carthage off the end of the world to indescribable adventures 500 years before the Christian calendar, among others. The song set closest to the present, "Shah of Shahs," finds the Shah of Iran caught in a decline of power in 1979 that eerily resembles today's scenario in the White House.
With Juber and Stewart on guitars, accompanied by gliding, jazzy keyboards, a rhythm section and occasional horns and strings, the mood of each song is well-matched to its accompaniment. Al's erudite lyrics, instantly recognizable Scottish/British drawl, and seductive tunes present him at the top of his art, braiding historical fact and speculative imagination into yet another memorable collection of musical short stories that whisks us up, down and sideways in time and place.
