Album review: Rod Stewart’s Another Country offers reflective look back on the past

Another Country by Rod Stewart. Capitol Records via AP

Another Country

Rod Stewart

(Capital Records)

Three stars

Rod Stewart's Another Country is stage two of his return to songwriting after a decade of Great American Songbook albums and the follow-up to 2013's successful Time.

On a lullaby dedicated to the youngest of his eight children, Batman Superman Spider-Man, Stewart contrasts today's superheroes with the "castles, kings and knights" of his own childhood stories, while the laid-back Can We Stay Home Tonight? sounds like an increasingly attractive proposal as time goes by.

On The Drinking Song, Stewart shows no remorse for years (decades?) of the high life, because, after all, he can always blame the beverage. Two non-originals close the album, of which A Friend for Life – a tender track by Steve Harley and Jim Cregan – provides ample proof of Stewart's interpretative skills.

The deluxe edition is worth the extra investment, especially for the groovy, Stax-like One Night With You and the original, late 1960s version of In a Broken Dream, a song Stewart first sang with Australian bank Python Lee Jackson and which was sampled recently by rapper A$AP Rocky.