NUDE

I'm a bit undecided on this one: I could list it among my favourite CAMELs but its faults are too striking. 1) Here and there it comes too close to the dreadful early 80's plastic AOR sound of Single Factor, their next album, and 2) I feel that the narrative concept about a soldier forgotten on an island made Andy Latimer to add some musically uninspired fillers: literally they only fill the gaps in the story. For example the tiny song 'Please Come Home' or the half-minute 'Birthday Cake'. The album consists of 15 tracks (mostly short) but fortunately the music keeps flowing pauselessly most of the time. Otherwise that would have been another frustating thing.

On the positive side, this is mostly instrumental (Andy's not much of a singer really...) and includes some gorgeous, strong moments. Probably Andy gets the best inspiration by a concept story to make his guitar SING - if at the same time it's hard to hold the inspiration for each step of that story. My fave track however is the peaceful 'Landscapes', where CAMEL comes near the New Age genre. For all the ups and downs I rate it in the middle, 3 stars.