Yusuf/Cat Stevens taps classic sound in new 'The Laughing Apple' album

An inescapable sense of foreboding runs through “Blackness of the Night,” the opening track from “The Laughing Apple,” the new album by Yusuf, aka Cat Stevens.

“In the blackness of the night I seem to wander endlessly, with a hope burning out deep inside,” Yusuf sings in the same soft, gravelly...