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(1975) Camel - The Snow Goose
Review:
This was the real Camel’s breakthrough album. It definitely defined Camel’s musical style in the next years to came. “The Snow Goose” is the third studio album of Camel and was released in 1975. The line up on the album is Andrew Latimer, Peter Bardens, Doug Ferguson and Andy Ward. The critical success of “The White Rider” suite, that appears on their second studio album “Mirage” released in the previous year and which was based on the Tolkien’s novel “The Lord Of The Rings”, inspired the band to write more novels inspired in conceptual pieces. However, when the group has retired to start working on their new album, they hadn’t decided yet, what concept to use on their next work. The band had considered several novels on which to base the album. In the end, the group hesitated between two of them. Bardens wanted to adapt the Hermann Hesse’s “Steppenwolf” and Ferguson and Ward favoured the Paul Gallico's novella, “The Snow Goose”. Latimer, who didn’t had a clear favourite, convinced Bardens that the Gallico’s novel would be a better option. The album’s name, originally “The Snow Goose” was altered to “Music Inspired By The Snow Goose” to accommodate legal protests of Paul Gallico due to copyright infringements. The work was originally thought, to feature lyrics based around the Paul Gallico’s book, but due to his objections, they decided to make of the album only an instrumental piece. The music was mostly written during an intensive fortnight in a cottage in Devon. “The Snow Goose” became the first and unique Camel’s album, without lyrics. It became also a truly landmark into their musical career. “The Snow Goose” or “Music Inspired By The Snow Goose”, is a conceptual album based on the very sentimental short novella written by Paul Gallico and named “The Snow Goose: A Story Of Dunkirk”. The entire story happens in the World War II when the British troops retreat from Dunkirk under the fire of the German army. In short, one day Rhayader, a disabled painter who lives in the marshes in a lonely lighthouse, finds a wounded Snow Goose brought by a girl, Fritha. Rhayader and Fritha, who is also concerned about the goose, taking care of him. Rhayader and Fritha become close friends. By the season’s end the goose heals and is set free. Rhayader stays alone again. Fritha doesn’t come to visit him anymore. Rhayader helps saving British soldiers at the battle of Dunkirk, and during the battle, the Snow Goose comes back to give some help. Rhayader is killed during the battle when a German pilot destroys the Rhayader’s lighthouse and all his work, except one portrait of Fritha painted by him. The painting shows a girl with a wild snow goose in her arms, which was the way that Rhayader first saw her. After the death of Rhayader, the Goose was named “La Princesse Perdue”. This symbolizes that the hope can still survive even during the evil of the war. The music on the album tells the story of the book. It can be a soundtrack and a storyline at the same time. However, if you’re expecting fifteen minutes of epic compositions, you’ll quickly find out that this isn’t the case. No song is longer than 6 minutes, and many of them are really quite short. The album consists of 16 tracks and is around 45 minutes long, which is unfortunately quite short. Despite the album has 16 tracks, it’s like one long song with shorter parts connecting the longer songs. As a conceptual piece, the music flows gracefully all over the album, since the beginning till the end. While there are a few songs you might listen to over and over again, the majority are too short to be listened individually. The album does what it was intended to do, and feels like an adventure, moving, changing, but connected enough to seem like the same adventure all the way through the album, accompanying perfectly all the story of it. All songs are filled with lots of amazing ideas and amazing melodies that are well brought out and full of interesting and always changing instrumentation that should be enjoyable to listen to. The album is fairly accessible and simple, and even when it’s doing something like a strange signature, you won't even notice that, because it blends so flawlessly. Overall, the songs themselves are great, and vary from orchestral to bluesy to rock to just chill, laid back songs. Conclusion: “The Snow Goose” is a great easy going album and which will probably stick with you for some time. If you’re new to Camel or progressive rock in general and you are looking for something to get you going, this is really a great starting point. In a certain way, “The Snow Goose” proved to be Camel’s breakthrough album. It definitely defined Camel’s style. Musically, on the subsequent albums, Camel wrote short songs with a very strong sense of melody, with solos that support perfectly the melody. Conceptually, the model will be used again several times in the later years, in albums like “Nude”, “Dust And Dreams” and “Harbour Of Tears”. Camel isn’t really a very famous band, like their contemporary colleagues, Genesis and Yes, for instance. But it’s an amazing and a very well known band and very well respected in the progressive circles. Hopefully this review might bring a bit more light to a very often overlooked band. — By John Miles @ sputnikmusic
Track List:
01 - The Great Marsh
02 - Rhayader
03 - Rhayader Goes To Town
04 - Sanctuary
05 - Fritha
06 - The Snow Goose
07 - Friendship
08 - Migration
09 - Rhayader Alone
10 - Flight Of The Snow Goose
11 - Preparation
12 - Dunkirk
13 - Epitaph
14 - Fritha Alone
15 - La Princesse Perdue
16 - The Great Marsh
Media Report:
Genre: progressive rock
Country: Guildford, Surrey, UK
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)
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