Vinyl Reports

When I first learned there was a new, expansive retrospective being released that would focus on singer, songwriter, and all-around music legend Yusuf / Cat Stevens, for a moment I questioned the need for such a collection. But, as I got to thinking about it — and did a bit of research on the concept — I realized that there indeed was a need for an up-to-date overview of the artist, past to present.

To that end, this comprehensive new 4LP more-than-greatest-hits Yusuf / Cat Stevens compilation titled On the Road to Findout — which was released via Island/Cat-O-Log on September 5, 2025 — celebrates the arc of the artist’s music, tracing 47 songs from his earliest singles up to the now times. (This is also a handy and timely companion release to his recently released autobiography bearing the same name.)

Yusuf / Cat Stevens has made an incredible amount of music over the years, dating back to his first single in 1966 on Decca, “I Love My Dog,” through his earworm-worthy pop hits “Matthew & Son” and “The First Cut Is The Deepest” on to his classic trilogy of singer/songwriter LPs on A&M: April 1970’s Mona Bone Jakon, November 1970’s Tea for the Tillerman, and October 1971’s Teaser and the Firecat. Along the way, he contributed the wonderful songtrack (it’s more than “just” a soundtrack!) to Hal Ashby’s now legendary and acclaimed 1972 film Harold and Maude. Betwixt and between, he’s been super-active, and has even releasing brand new music as recently as 2023. (As I noted in my review of Stevens’ November 1974 live album Saturnight (Cat Stevens Live in Tokyo) — which posted here, on May 30, 2025 — Cat changed his name to Yusuf during his latter-years recording revival, and has since presented it as Yusuf / Cat Stevens to acknowledge his rich recorded legacy.)

While there is no shortage of compilations and retrospectives on the market for Yusuf / Cat’s classic 1970s-era of music-making (see the above array for but a few examples!), there really wasn’t a comprehensive modern overview to bring fans new and old up to date with the artist from the beginning to the present. Thus, we have the perfect appeal of this new On The Road to Findout 4LP box set. (Footnote 1)

Before I dive into the music, let’s just say that the underlying DNA for this box set seems solid. Upfront, let’s acknowledge that since the audio itself was remastered, it was probably done in the digital domain. I think mastering engineer Mazen Murad at Katara Studio did a noble job creating this 4LP set, because it is a very enjoyable listening experience end-to-end, which in turn respects the music. (More on that in a bit.)

The new vinyl lacquers were cut by Geoff Pesche at Abbey Road Studios in London. The 140g, standard-weight vinyl was manufactured in the Czech Republic (probably at Precision, where UMe has pressed many of its releases over the years). Each disc comes housed in its own colorful custom cardboard sleeve, featuring images of Yusuf / Cat Stevens over the years. (You’ll see them peppered all throughout this review.) The vinyl is further protected by plastic-lined, audiophile-grade inner sleeves.

The On The Road to Findout 4LP box set sports an SRP of $139.99, and you can order it via Music Direct here, and/or via the MD link graphic at the end of this review that’s just ahead of the tracklisting section. (A much-abbreviated, 2LP edition is also available for $32.99.)

In the spirit of this collection’s quest for showcasing the complete journey that Yusuf / Cat Stevens has been on all these years, I actually started my listening experience with the final disc in the set, LP4. This LP focuses on the artist’s more recent releases, which some of you may not know about — I know I certainly didn’t, prior to this release! — including November 2006’s An Other Cup, May 2009’s Roadsinger, October 2014’s Tell ’Em I’m Gone, September 2017’s The Laughing Apple, September 2020’s Tea for the Tillerman 2, and June 2023’s King of a Land.

I’m honestly glad I started this way because, frankly, there is some outstanding music on these later discs within On The Road to Findout, which is as strong, confident and focused as his seminal work from 1970-71, imo.

Sidenote: I have to qualify my inherent bias here, as I grew up as little 10-year-old kid hearing several of Stevens’ now-classic albums that were in my older brother’s record collection. Many of these tunes were getting played on the emerging new medium of high-fidelity stereo FM radio ,which we listened to all the time — especially WNEW-FM in New York). In particular, I’m talking about the earlier mentioned Tea for the Tillerman and its brilliant followup, Teaser and the Firecat.

For some reason, my brother didn’t get the albums that came after those, so I lost touch with Stevens’ music for a bit. When I was a little older I tried listening to September 1972’s Catch Bull at Four and March 1974’s Buddha and the Chocolate Box, as well as May 1977’s Izitso and December 1978’s Back to Earth. Unfortunately, I never really connected with those albums, and thus was not following his comeback career closely. So much of the music on On The Road to Findout is genuinely new to me! And that is my tale. Your story, of course, may be different, but I’m offering this perspective that inevitably shapes my viewpoint of his music today.

All that said, I’m genuinely loving all the newer material on LP4. The first thing that knocked me out was hearing Yusuf / Cat Stevens rocking out in a manner I hadn’t heard in ages on “Gold Digger” (LP4, Side Seven, Track 3). This song has a somber, bluesy swagger that — consciously or subconsciously — offers nods to both The Kinks’ 1966 single “Dead End Street” and George Harrison’s once-unreleased 1968 Beatles track “Not Guilty” (with its ripping distorted guitar signature riff, as heard on Apple/Capitol/UMe’s October 1996 Beatles release Anthology 3, and eventually recorded in a softer manner as released on November 1979’s eponymously titled Dark Horse album, George Harrison).

Speaking of George Harrison, Yusuf / Cat Stevens offers up a lovely acoustic cover of his 1969 Beatles perennial favorite originally from Abbey Road, “Here Comes the Sun” (LP4, Side Eight, Track 4). But really, the most powerful cover the artist delivers here (and again, it’s another knockout moment for me) is his cherry choice of Edgar Winter’s incredible and ever-poignant “Dying to Live” (from 1971’s Edgar Winter’s White Trash LP). For me it was very much a full-circle moment, because my older brothers had that Edgar Winter album alongside those aforementioned Cat Stevens albums. “Dying to Live” in particular was always a powerful listen for me, and it is sadly even more heart-wrenching today.

Yusuf / Cat Stevens’ funky bluesy reimagining of the ostensible “On the Road to Find Out” title track (LP4, Side Eight, Track 2) from 2020’s Tea for The Tillerman 2 is super-inspiring. (Footnote 2) It feels kind of like one of T-Bone Burnett’s productions with Robert Plant and Alison Krauss on their October 2007 collaboration Raising Sand — rich, woody, acoustic-but-rocking, swampy, and impassioned.

Perhaps in some ways, even more important is the overview that On the Road to Findout offered me — as perhaps it will do for you — to re-appraise and reconsider Stevens’ mid/late-1970s work. The third LP in the box set kicks off with his great Top 10 hit cover of Sam Cooke’s “Another Saturday Night” (LP3, Side Five, Track 1), which was a single-only release back in 1974. “(I Never Wanted) to Be a Star” (LP3, Side Five, Track 5) is a telling travelogue-autobiography of a song from 1977’s Izitso, and the source for that album’s playful title.

I was even surprised how much I even enjoyed the disco-soul of “Butterfly “(LP3, Side Six, Track 3), which is apparently an outtake from the 1978 Back to Earth sessions that were finally released in 2020. Even more impressive is the way the track sequencing works here, as the playlist jumps ahead 28 years to Yusuf / Cat Stevens’ “Heaven / Where True Love Goes” (LP3, Side Six, Track 4) from 2006’s An Other Cup. While this is not a disco song, its soulful big production and arrangement nimbly traverses the years, creating a special bridge moment of remarkable continuity.

Yusuf / Stevens’ songwriting seems to have retained its classic singer/songwriter strengths over the years, especially when you hear songs like “Maybe There’s a World” (LP3, Side Six, Track 5) that could have easily fit on albums like Tea for the Tillerman decades earlier.

In general, I am very pleased with On The Road to Findout. Across all four LPs in this collection, the fidelity is generally excellent, and remarkably consistent track-to-track. This is never an easy task, and given the material here spans close to 60 years of the artist’s career, we have to offer some kudos to above-noted mastering engineer Mazen Murad of Katara Studios for paying attention to those little details that differentiate a great listening experience. All of my discs were happily well-centered and played transparently (i.e., dead quiet), allowing the music to just shine.

Musically, I can easily give On the Road to Findout an easy 10, given the overall high quality of the tracks chosen for inclusion here. And given that the box set generally sounds so very nice from start to finish, I’m happy to give the Sound rating a solid 9 overall. (Footnote 3)

If you have been looking for a good, solid collection of Yusuf / Cat Stevens’ work across all stages of his career, the On the Road to Findout 4LP box set is like a finding sweet pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.

Author bio: Mark Smotroff is an avid vinyl collector who has also worked in marketing communications for decades. He has reviewed music for eCoustics, among others, and you can see more of his impressive C.V. at LinkedIn.

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Footnote 1: AP editor Mike Mettler adds: Note that some press materials for Findout (and other outlets) add the phrase Greatest Hits to the box set’s album title proper, but since it does not appear on the packaging anywhere other than on the hype sticker, we are refraining from using it anywhere in this review ourselves.

Footnote 2: Mettler again: While the song title indeed has the final phrase “Find Out” appearing as two words, the box set’s overarching title instead puts them together as Findout.

Footnote 3: Mettler once more: For comparison, the LPs in my Findout box set fit a bit more snugly on my spindle than I tend to prefer, and I did also detect some pops and clicks here and there (sometimes between tracks, sometimes with Stevens’ early acoustic-guitar-strumming style), along with a bit of sibilance on Yusuf / Stevens’ ’70s-era enunciations of “s” sounds — all things that became nominal, if not negligible, once I dialed back the volume level a few clicks.

With that in mind, my overall Sound rating is an 8.5, and I would give the Music a collective 9, from my POV. The bottom line is, On the Road to Findout is indeed a great, full-catalog overview of the arc of Yusuf / Cat Stevens’ storied career, and it’s a wonderful, expanded companion to the trio of deeper-dive box sets released by A&M/UMe in recent years celebrating his key 1970-71 output.

YUSUF / CAT STEVENS
ON THE ROAD TO FINDOUT
4LP (Island/Cat-O-Log)
MUSIC: 10
SOUND: 9

Executive Producer: Yusuf / Cat Stevens
Project Manager: Yoriyos Adamos
Audio remastered by Mazen Murad at Katara Studios, Qatar
Vinyl lacquers cut by Geoff Pesche at Abbey Road Studios, London
Vinyl produced in the Czech Republic

LP1, Side One
1. I Love My Dog
2. Matthew & Son
3. Here Comes My Baby
4. The First Cut Is The Deepest
5. La D’Arbanville
6. Trouble

LP1, Side Two
1. Where Do The Children Play?
2. Wild World
3. Father And Son
4. Tea For The Tillerman
5. Don’t Be Shy
6. If You Want To Sing Out, Sing Out

LP2, Side Three
1. The Wind
2. How Can I Tell You
3. Morning Has Broken
4. Moonshadow
5. Peace Train
6. I Want To Live In A Wigwam

LP2, Side Four
1. Sitting
2. Can’t Keep It In
3. Foreigner Suite (Excerpt)
4. The Hurt
5. Ready
6. Oh Very Young

LP3, Side Five
1. Another Saturday Night
2. Majik Of Majiks
3. Banapple Gas
4. (Remember The Days Of The) Old Schoolyard
5. (I Never Wanted) to Be a Star

LP3, Side Six
1. Just Another Night
2. Last Love Song
3. Butterfly
4. Heaven / Where True Love Goes
5. Maybe There’s A World
6. Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood

LP4, Side Seven
1. Thinking ‘Bout You
2. Roadsinger
3. Gold Digger
4. Dying To Live
5. Blackness Of The Night
6. Grandsons

LP4, Side Eight
1. Miles From Nowhere
2. On The Road To Find Out
3. Father And Son
4. Here Comes The Sun (Acoustic)
5. All Nights, All Days
6. Take The World Apart