For those unaware, Yusuf / Cat Stevens’ beloved 1974 album Buddha and the Chocolate Box has been newly remastered and is now available via Cat-O-Log Records/A&M/UMe, more than fifty years after it first appeared. Cat Stevens’ sixth A&M Records LP — one of four consecutive albums to reach the Top 3 on both sides of the Atlantic — is available once again on CD, vinyl, and digitally for streaming and download.

Originally released March 19th, 1974, Buddha and the Chocolate Box marked the return of both producer Paul Samwell-Smith and guitarist Alun Davies, following their absence on the preceding album, Foreigner. Sonically, the record was a homecoming to the style of the Tea for the Tillerman and Teaser and the Firecat era — but with the arrangements and production reaching a new level of finesse and polish. Billboard welcomed it warmly at the time, writing that “Cat Stevens is back with the kind of material he does best” and praising the album’s “lush, full sound.”

“Buddha and the Chocolate Box reopened the doors of my familiar melodious soft delivery and sentiments. Although still experimental in compositional terms, it was what most of my fans desperately wanted to hear next. Following on from Foreigner, the Buddha album proved – especially to those who had no faith – that the missing Cat had simply wandered away from home for a while. My principle of independence was asserted as with most cats, don’t ever dare think you own them! As far as the critics were concerned, album-wise, it marked my heralded return to ‘Cat Stevens’ form.”

– Yusuf / Cat Stevens, “Cat on the Road to Findout”

Continuing the acclaimed reissue program, following 2024’s Saturnight (Cat Stevens: Live in Tokyo) and 2025’s On the Road to Findout: Greatest Hits, Buddha and the Chocolate Box has been meticulously remastered from the original Island UK production tapes and is presented with newly refreshed artwork.

The album is available on 180-gram black vinyl, CD, and digital HD (96kHz / 24bit) and SD formats. An exclusive 180g Chocolate Brown vinyl edition is available via the Yusuf / Cat Stevens and uDiscover stores.

1. Music (4:19)
2. Oh Very Young (2:33)
3. Sun / C79 (4:34)
4. Ghost Town (3:08)
6. Ready (3:14)
7. King Of Trees (5:08)
8. A Bad Penny (3:21)
9. Home In The Sky (3:36)

In all honesty, this quite delightful album (‘Buddha and the Chocolate Box’) is an album that just doesn’t often get mentioned as being the sweetest, the brightest or the most healing record in Cat Stevens’ fine collection of eleven original albums recorded in the eleven years between 1967 and 1978; but it should, in my humble opinion.

Most Cat Stevens fans will rave on about ‘Teaser’ and ‘Tillerman’ till the firecats come home, but it’s generally forgotten to the world at large that Cat made several other fine LPs in the 1970s. In truth Buddha isn’t much like either of Cat’s famous twin albums, not having the same thematic consistency or acoustic honesty that they do. But Buddha has so much to offer, being easily the best and most consistent album from the second-half of Cat’s career - at the same time breaking so much new ground.

Opening on Music we instantly find Cat at his so-called angriest, with Oh Very Young him at his most philosophical, Sun/C79 puts him front and center as his most prog rock-esque, and whilst these three all present Cat at his best, you can also hear him moving into wonderous new musical soundscapes to come.

Released hard on the heels of an experimental album of only five songs (the under-rated Foreigner), Cat realized that he had gone too far (is my opinion) and now that he was safely back home this was one last attempt to make music his priority and lure as much of his fans back as possible.

It kinda reminds me of ‘Mona’ in that now that Cat was home and out in the world again everything seemed bigger once more: more bold, more beautiful, more brilliant with stronger moods of pure anger sadness and happiness. However, Cat is less interested in the humility and acoustic fragility he had before and seemed to treat this record as his last great big chance to say something re: packing everything into this high budget album.

As a result, Buddha has the biggest and most expansive sound of any Cat album: full of bleeping synthesizers and equally bleeping choirs filling up every possibly hole, while the instrumentation tends to fill the songs up with three guitars and four pianos where usually one or two would do.

To also call Buddha a very busy album would be spot on as it most certainly is a big-on-sound album, but one thankfully not devoid of lyrical ideas at its soul, of course. Indeed, Buddha is an album that, from the opening angry snarl, doesn’t ever do quite what you expect of it - a record one step ahead of us most of the way through, so to speak, and which was a glorious concept.

Despite the hugeness of the sound and the wideness of the scope, this is also Cat at his most personal, intimate and downright engaging as he had been since Mona Bone with an honesty and bite to his lyrics that’s long been buried under his guise as an age-old philosopher. No longer does he sound like the cold hard detached ‘Old Testament’ Cat of ‘Foreigner’ – this album is as warm-blooded and emotional as he ever made - and with the benefit of a full band sound behind him.

Jesus finally finds Cat addressing religion head on, whereas Ghost Town lets the album simmer down a little bit after such an intense one-two-three emotional punch, with some ghostly sound effects signaling the listener’s move into the afterlife lurking behind many of the songs on what was the first side of the vinyl, and amongst others is a gentle ecological epic entitled King Of Trees.

Buddha may have swapped the acoustic guitars and pianos for electric guitar riffs and keyboards, but this is still a very Cat Stevens-like album, full of sensitive philosophical ballads, and angry rockers putting the world to rights - and plenty of mystical lyrics and drop-dead gorgeous tunes along the way.

Oh, and for those unaware, there is also a secondary theme running through this record too about the shortness of our time on this planet, an idea taken in nine very different ways; but I won’t bore you with all that here. Just listen to the album, track by track, and you will find your path to travel, my friends.

Official Purchase Links

www.catstevens.com

Yusuf / Cat Stevens @ Facebook