A Beach Full of Shells

"A Beach Full of Shells," Al€s Appleseed debut and first new US release since 1995€s "Between the Wars," finds Stewart in timeless form, presenting 13 new songs that span centuries and continents, autobiography and fiction. As he nears the 20-album mark, Stewart remains a distinctively literate and vivid storyteller, time-traveling and teleporting from World War I battlefields to Sixties bedrooms, from ships to airplanes to ice floes, from the specific to the mysterious.

Musical settings that encompass electric folk-rock and acoustic ballads, colorful dabs of classical and Eastern music, and even a touch of Little Richard-style piano pounding, are as varied and imaginative as Al€s subject matters. The CD€s producer, Laurence Juber has enhanced Al€s elegant Scottish drawl, nimble acoustic guitar-work and keyboards with his own Grammy-winning guitar playing, string arrangements and percussion and a flexible rhythm section.

"The Immelman Turn" kicks off the CD in a style reminiscent of Fairport Convention, with spirited violin and barbed electric guitar sweeping us into the tale of a doomed pilot€s last flight. Then we fall down the genteel rabbit hole of "Mr. Lear," a tribute to the 19th Century nonsense poet, before landing in the veiled intrigue of "Royal Courtship." Elsewhere and elsewhen, we are taken "Somewhere in England 1915"; into the freezing bleakness of "Out in the Snow"; to visit party girl "Gina in the Kings Road"; to the frenzied rock €n€ roll past of "Class of €58" and a peaceful, nostalgia-filled old age in "Katherine of Oregon." And that€s just part of the tour on "A Beach Full of Shells."