CAMEL: DUST AND DREAMS (1991)
1) Dust Bowl; 2) Go West; 3)
Dusted Out; 4) Mother Road; 5) Needles; 6) Rose Of Sharon; 7) Milk 'n' Honey;
8) End Of The Line; 9) Storm Clouds; 10) Cotton Camp; 11) Broken Banks; 12)
Sheet Rain; 13) Whispers; 14) Little Rivers And Little Rose; 15) Hopeless
Anger; 16) Whispers In The Rain.
Isn't it a bit too predictable that, upon moving to California in the late
Eighties, Latimer got the idea to make his new album into a conceptual suite
based on The Grapes Of Wrath? Maybe
he, too, liked to imagine himself as an outcast, broken down by the capitalist
system (as personified by Decca Records) and further battered by unfavorable
circumstances? Oh well, at any rate he must have been well off enough so as not
to resort to baling cotton or picking peaches — instead, inspired by his new
beginnings and supported by his wife, Susan Hoover (who wrote a large part of
the lyrics), he set up his own minor label (Camel Productions), got the Stationary Traveller band back
together, and besieged his muse for comfort.
Theoretically, a Camel-style musical / rock
opera / oratorio / whatever, based on The
Grapes Of Wrath, could have been a humble masterpiece — had it been
recorded an era ago. The problem with Dust
And Dreams, though, is that in terms of overall sound it is exactly like Stationary Traveller. The two main ingredients are still
Scherpenzeel's «adult-approved» synthesizers and Latimer's clean, tasteful, and
all-too-polite electric guitar; in between the two, they keep on generating the
exact same soft-pretty-melancholic mood on every single track, and the result
is yet another record whose appeal will largely be restricted to fans of
post-Waters era Pink Floyd and very late Alan Parsons Project.
It might seem like a very good idea that most
of the tracks are instrumental: the first two thirds of the album shift between
vocal and instrumental compositions, and the final third, beginning with ʽStorm
Cloudsʼ, is a completely instrumental suite, with several movements
illustrating different moments from Tom Joad's timeline. After all, Camel's
best albums had always been associated with instrumental music, and the vocals were one of the major reasons why Stationary Traveller had that safe-and-bland
adult contemporary look. Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple. While the
final suite does sound unmistkably «Camelish», the instrumentation is too
monotonous, and the melodic themes are too unimaginative, for it to even begin
to match the peaks of Snow Goose or
even Nude.
The most bold and «progressive» part of the
suite is ʽHopeless Angerʼ, which does try to be louder, more dynamic and,
indeed, angry than the rest of the compositions — and even goes as far as to
incorporate some non-standard time signatures and multiple theme changes. But
everything is just way too
predictable — the big drum sound, the synth textures, the melodic guitar solos
that always stop right on the brink of becoming exciting. There's no true
memorability to these themes, and there's almost no personality; in fact, I
think I'd easily pick contemporary Rush product over this, because at least
Rush have always had the advantage of technically more impressive musicianship
(well, Latimer might probably hold his own against Alex Lifeson, but the rhythm
section on Dust And Dreams is not even
worth talking about).
As for the vocal songs, well... I guess the
only true low point is ʽRose Of Sharonʼ, which sounds like a cross between an
ABBA ballad (courtesy of guest vocalist Mae McKenna, who is sometimes compared
with Enya but here sometimes dips into Frida's style) and a Disney musical
number, but I am not really impressed with stuff like ʽMother Roadʼ (a MOR
rocker with the usual boring pop metal rhythm guitars) or even with potentially
poignant lyrical tracks like ʽGo Westʼ that seem to be trying way too hard to
woo the listener with their «deep» sentimentality. Too clean, too polished, too
Spiritual for a band that did not even have the budget to hire a proper orchestra,
and had to model all of its Spirituality on awful plastic keyboards. (Okay, so
one cannot really blame them for lack of budget — but, I dunno, one single
classically trained cellist could have made more of a contribution than Tom
Scherpenzeel and his array of electronics).
Overall, this is not a disaster — there's
enough intelligent guitar playing here, and enough of reasonable musical ideas
to at least let you know that this is no contract obligation we're talking about.
But in terms of general sound, this record was frickin' dated before its time:
production values are totally hickey for the likes of 1991 — more like 1987,
when even Bruce Springsteen succumbed to such cheesiness on Tunnel Of Love. If Stationary Traveller was an odd conceptual idea degraded to the
level of total embarrassment, then Dust
And Dreams is an improvement, as it's a fine conceptual idea degarded to
the level of passable mediocrity. But that, unfortunately, is still not much
of a recommendation.
Only listened to this album twice and I agree with George's opinion. IMHO it's rather boring but not bad
ReplyDeleteIf it sounds more 1987 than 1991 it might be because it was almost completly written as a follow up to 'Stationary Traveller', but put on hold after the label dropped the group. THEN he moved to the US and set up his own label and studio.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the music, always an interesting opinion, but I keep reading in all these reviews that the melodies are not memorable... and for me and all the people I've introduced Camel to through the years, that is preciselly the strong point. There was no mention of 'Hymn to her' in the ICSYHFH review, nor to 'Drafted' in the Nude review. And I find it hard not to consider memorable the two main melodies of 'Hopeless Anger' not memorable. Maybe it's just that the kind of music that Latimer does just doesn't resonate with you, which I guess it's fine. Music has always been the most subjetive of arts.