Numbers (Record Store Day RSD 2024) vinyl

The concept album is a divisive, err, concept. So often are we overwhelmed at the length of sleeve notes that make such little tangible sense it feels like falling through a wall of ketamine on acid, it almost makes us approach all sleeve notes with trepidation. Then you have records that have a bat shit crazy idea behind them, but convey it quite succinctly. Or at least in terms of the vital information you need to know. A few years before his own spiritual journey led him to Islam, Cat Stevens, later Yusuf, gave us Numbers, which is frankly the best type of concept album. Playing out like a surreal rock opera, of sorts, it's the soundtrack to a planned book, The Pythagorean Theory Tale, which tells of a planet, Polygor, on which there's a castle with a number machine, there to churn out new numbers and distribute these across the galaxy. Does it make sense? No. Do we grasp the fundamentals? Yes. Is it fantastic? Most certainly.