Cat ( Yusuf ) Stevens - Tell 'em I'm Gone [Yellow]

“Tell 'Em I'm Gone” is the album where Yusuf follows the blues to its origins, before he even picks up a guitar, produced with Rick Rubin and pressed on yellow vinyl.

Anyone who has followed his career knows he has done this before. Both “Foreigner” and “Numbers” cast aside the recognizable folk vocals to pursue something entirely different, and this 2014 album does the same thing, aiming for the blues and Leadbelly in particular, a longtime favorite whose imprint is everywhere. Rubin is the obvious producer for this kind of back-to-basics, and the sessions took place in Los Angeles, Dubai, Brussels and London, bringing together the harmonica of Charlie Musselwhite, the guitar of Richard Thompson, Bonnie Prince Billy and the Tuareg band Tinariwen along the way.

Five original tracks, five covers, and it is the covers that carry the argument of the album. “Big Boss Man” arrives laid back and swaggering, “Dying to Live” transforms the Edgar Winter song into something more resigned, and “You Are My Sunshine” is stripped of all sweetness, reworked into a slow blues that sounds almost menacing. “I Was Raised in Babylon” opens the album with his own compositions that fit perfectly into the whole.

The cover he designed himself, illustrated by William Stout. He always paid attention to the whole.