CAMEL: BREATHLESS (1978)
1) Breathless; 2) Echoes; 3)
Wing And A Prayer; 4) Down On The Farm; 5) Starlight Ride; 6) Summer Lightning;
7) You Make Me Smile; 8) Sleeper; 9) Rainbow's End.
Finally, a certified sellout! With the same
lineup as on Rain Dances, Latimer
and Bardens take Camel on a relaxed journey that combines traces of their
«progressive» past with pure pop, simple balladry, and even a few escapades
into the corny world of contemporary dance music (ʻSummer Lightningʼ borders on
disco). With so much evidence in hand to make a perfectly winnable case, prog
fans usually say that this is the point at which Camel finally sheds its hump
and ceases to exist as a means of transporting the listener to magical musical
worlds.
Despite this, and despite the even more
suspicious fact that Breathless is
also a fairly «happy» record for Camel, I have always felt attracted to it —
perhaps because the songs harbor some sort of bright collective innocence. Even
the two syrupy ballads, ʻYou Make Me Smileʼ and ʻRainbow's Endʼ, which usually
receive the lion's share of hatred, are well-written and lack some of the
cheesier trappings typically associated with such material — ʻYou Make Me
Smileʼ may be riding a simplistic danceable bassline, but Latimer's tender
vocal delivery still wins over with its quiet humility; the intonations and
hooks put it closer to contemporary pop material by the Kinks and Fleetwood
Mac's Christine McVie rather than Styx or Foreigner or Chicago. And even if the
falsetto vocal harmonies on ʻRainbow's Endʼ are a cringeworthy misstep,
overdone to irritating point, the basic vocal melody itself is quite nicely
modulated.
There's some really odd stuff, too, like
Richard Sinclair's ʻDown On The Farmʼ, which begins quite deceptively with some
huge power chords, like a monster Boston-style arena rocker — then, in one
single whiff, turns into a quiet rural Brit-pop ditty that would not feel
completely out of place on The Cheerful
Insanity Of Giles, Giles & Fripp (a bit of extra humor and absurdity
wouldn't hurt, though). ʻStarlight Rideʼ, with its smoothly sustained keyboard
parts and gentle harmonies, sounds like London
Town-era (i. e. contemporary) Paul McCartney with an extra baroque touch.
And ʻSummer Lightningʼ basically just commits the crime of employing a dance
signature, otherwise fully preserving Camel's aesthetics of quiet, unassuming,
melancholic jazz-pop (it also features Latimer's most energetic-aggressive solo
on the entire album).
The conservative spirit rules on two «prog
leftovers», the seven-minute semi-epics ʻEchoesʼ (no relation to Floyd) and
ʻSleeperʼ, of which the former has a pretty main theme in the guise of a
psychedelic waltz, and the latter is an unremarkable exercise in fusion, truly
the «sleeper» of the album. Essentially, it is as if you had a choice here — do
you want the old Camel with its tired
prog vibe, or the new Camel with its
fresh ideas? The new Camel may go disco on your ass, but at least it's got the
benefit of unpredictability. The old Camel will not betray its sense of taste
and dignity, but it's never going to expand on Snow Goose and Moonmadness.
Now it is all up to you, music lovers with an interest in the year nineteen
hundred and seventy eight.
Personally, I think that Breathless is one of the better executed «compromises» of the time,
and at the very least I'd definitely take it over stuff like Yes' Tormato or Genesis' And Then There Were Three: when Latimer
and Bardens go pop, they are brave enough to go all the way that it takes to
reach a proper hook, selling out for an actual purpose rather than just selling out and making music that
is unsatisfactory from all points of view (not catchy enough to constitute good
pop, not complex enough to make up for decent prog). As a result, we have this
oddly optimistic record, full of good, friendly vibes presented without too
much sentimentalism and without any unwarranted pathos whatsoever; a record that
I not only find impossible to hate, but endorse with all the strength of a
firmly fixed thumbs
up rating.
I must admit: if all disco would be like Summer Lightning I would hate it a lot less. Not even Miss You could do that.
ReplyDeleteDamn--love the Sleeper. I love this whole album, but often I'll skip right to that number--such a cool vibe, and adding to the abundant variety. You Make Me Smile has at least got a somewhat unusual rhythm to add extra curiosity; and is that Dave Sinclair doing the solo? He is retroactively credited with guest keys on the track, but the synth sounds like Pete's. Rainbow's End is obviously a bon voyage to Bardens--an end to an ear as Robert Wyatt might have it, and signals a major step in the direction of Camel becoming basically Andy L's band.
ReplyDelete