Al Stewart
A Beach Full of Shells

The concept album is a challenge, a stimulus, but it can also be a limitation, a constraint that limits spontaneity, and perhaps for this very reason Al Stewart has never tackled this challenge until his later maturity. Even considering "Between The Wars" and "Down In The Cellar" as two excellent albums, the continuation of his career further confirms that the true calling of this artist remains the free style, and with a touch of wisdom, the invaluable experience of decades of career and much inspiration, Al Stewart manages to return right there, to the levels expressed in the period from 1976-1980.

"A Beach Full Of Shells" from 2005 is not only his best album since "24 Carrots," but it develops a new stylistic metric, drawing lessons from all past experiences; even "Famous Last Words" was a great album with many beautiful songs, but ABFOS finally manages to reconstruct a fluid and cohesive discourse, even if not tied to a particular theme, thus reconnecting with what Al Stewart had always done from his beginnings until 1980. Specifically, the musical offering of "A Beach Full Of Shells" consists of a mature pop-folk, predominantly acoustic, and enriched by the usual cultured references; it is the perfection of Al Stewart, the final evolution of his stylistic measure; here the Glasgow singer-songwriter appears like a modern-day Ulysses who, after facing numerous perils and adventures more or less happily, finally returns to his Ithaca, enriched with an incalculable amount of experience and strengthened in his certainties, looking fearlessly at a radiant sunset, with the serenity of one who knows they have always acted with grace and decorum, never losing their dignity.

"This is the Mona Lisa talking out of a patch of oil and water, over the street lamps and the river, out of a smile that lasts forever, go home pretty baby, go on home pretty baby, you will go home to the one who is waiting for you, anything that you want, anything that you do, you will go home to the one who is waiting alone for you"

A warm and embracing ballad like the comfort of a loved one, with a slight soul touch and female choirs reminiscent of Leonard Cohen's "Ten New Songs," this is "Mona Lisa Talking", one of the highest examples of "A Beach Full Of Shells," of what Al Stewart still has to offer in all his spontaneity and human warmth. In this album, the Scottish singer-songwriter often and willingly expresses himself from the perspective of a first-person narrator; we find him dealing with old objects and memories of the past in a beautiful waltz with surrealistic tones like "Catherine Of Oregon", or going back to childhood in "Mr. Lear", a delightful and lively homage to the quirky English poet Edward Lear and his almost nonsensical compositions, or evoking the rock 'n' roll saga in "Class Of 58". The historical references are more open, more nuanced compared to his standards, a unique characteristic of "A Beach Full Of Shells," war, the reflections of a man forced to hide in the gutter of a consulate to save his life in "Rain Barrel", ironic and desperate at the same time, or the vicissitudes of two lovers, members of royal families of two presumably rival countries, evoked in a poignant ballad in minor like "Royal Courtship". Opened by the daring aerobatics of pioneering aviators in "The Immelman Turn" with its fascinating string arabesques and closed by a superb "Anniversary", the story of a man who, tired of an empty bourgeois life lacking genuine emotions, decides to disappear into nothingness, leaving everything behind, this album contains one of the most ambitious songs from an authorial standpoint and most fascinating from an emotional standpoint in the Stewartian repertoire, "Somewhere In England, 1915", a fine songwriting piece filled with melancholy and episodes and characters of a black and white England, now very distant in time, relived as in a dream. The evocative charm and beauty of that acoustic melody orchestrated with taste and restraint, vaguely echoing some episodes from mid-70s Francesco de Gregori, make this song the focal point of the album, the heir of "Year Of The Cat" if you like, and perhaps also a memory, a final farewell to the nation where Al Stewart was born and raised, before Lady Diana, before the Oasis, before Robbie Williams.

Britishness is a fundamental and characterizing feature of this album, the most "national" of Al Stewart's career, even more evident than his debut "Bedsitter Images," without stereotypes and sweet-nothings. Talking about characters not very familiar to us like Lonnie Donegan, Edward Lear, Violet Asquith, and Siegfied Sassoon may appear as snobbery or elitism to some superficial "up-to-date" individuals, but we don't care about that, because those born as poets can't and shouldn't die as courtiers, never, under any circumstances, and to create an album like this, extraordinary talent is not enough, truly important and profound human and moral qualities are also needed. Reject conformism, standardization, remain loyal to oneself, "To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield", to put it like Alfred Tennyson, and then three or four slightly stiffer episodes barely inferior to the qualitative average of this splendid album become secondary, its correct evaluation would be a 4.5, a prelude to perfection sealed today and perhaps definitively with the next album.