Vinyl Record
Cat Stevens - New Masters
Cat Stevens - New Masters on LP vinyl. A 1967 record available from Kilmorna Collection in Listowel, Ireland.
LP ยท 1967
Available from Kilmorna Collection in Listowel.
Buyer notes: 1967 LP, currently available from the Kilmorna Collection vinyl shelf. Pay for pickup in Listowel or ship within Ireland for EUR 5.50.
New Masters is Cat Stevens' second album, released late in 1967, and it is one of the more revealing records in his early catalogue precisely because it is uneven in such an instructive way. The album follows Matthew & Son quickly, still carrying producer Mike Hurst's taste for fuller arrangements while Stevens was beginning to want a simpler acoustic direction. That tension gives the record its personality. Kitty, Northern Wind, The Laughing Apple, Blackness of the Night, and I Love Them All keep the 1960s pop frame in view, but The First Cut Is the Deepest points beyond the album itself. Stevens' own version is modest compared with the song's later life through other singers, yet the writing is already monumental. New Masters sounds like a young artist pushing against the room he is still inside.
The album matters because it captures Cat Stevens at a crossroads before his 1970 rebirth. Its commercial performance was modest, but its songwriting importance is impossible to ignore because The First Cut Is the Deepest became one of his most enduring compositions. The record preserves the friction before the breakthrough change.
For collectors, New Masters is the early-period puzzle piece. It may not have the immediate confidence of Matthew & Son or the intimate authority of Mona Bone Jakon, but it explains the transition between them. It belongs on a serious Cat Stevens shelf because it shows both the limits of the first phase and the songwriting strength that would survive it.
Late-1960s folk-pop and baroque pop with orchestral touches, youthful melodic craft, occasional darker acoustic turns, and a tension between pop arrangement and emerging singer-songwriter simplicity.
Recommended for: Collectors completing the early Cat Stevens albums; Listeners interested in the origins of The First Cut Is the Deepest; Fans of 1960s British folk-pop with transitional energy.
When was New Masters released? The official Cat Stevens discography lists New Masters as released in December 1967. What is the best-known song from New Masters? The First Cut Is the Deepest is the major song associated with the album. Is New Masters part of the same phase as Tea for the Tillerman? No. It belongs to Stevens' earlier 1960s pop period, before the stripped-down 1970s sound arrived.