DUST AND DREAMS

After 7 years of silence, Camel returns to the ambitions of stylings of Nude. Dust and Dreams is an album that has pleased many Camel fans so it might please you as well, who knows. I think it has its moments but I can't see how this is any better then Nude was.

It all starts very good really. After a short setting of the mood, Go West continues the style of emotive song writing that had flourished on Stationary Traveler. Especially Latimer's voice is in great shape again. Just like Nude, the album forms one symphonic unity. A piece like Dusted Out must be listened to in that context. It's an overtly bombastic orchestral piece but it works quite well as an interlude to the next track.

Mother Road is another song in the style of Stationary Traveler but I don't like the chord changes after the verses here. It's a sort of bridge that doesn't lead anywhere, the actual break after the second bridge is really painful. It's very short, luckily, but it's nevertheless a deep fall into a particularly sticky cheese pit, one that the album can't seem to crawl out again.

On Rose of Sharon, Camel even touches musical territory here, or rather a sentimental duet between a male and female voice. The guitar in the middle is adequate as usual but can't save the song.

The album continues to balance new age instrumental pieces against sentimental sung parts. End of The Line isn't bad but dwells in the same plastic midi-land that Hammill had moved to in that period. Mainly for that reason, the remainder of the album can't grab my attention at all.

It's hard to rate really, I'd be around 2.5 stars somewhere but that has to be rounded some way or other. As it is decidedly less then Nude which I gave 3 stars, I think I'll have to condemn this one to the fans-only territory.