RAIN DANCES

No more than three stars for an album that have seen Camel transformed into a clone of the pop side of Caravan. There are still good songs influenced by the past, but most of the stuff here is "contaminated" by Richard Sinclair. He is an extremely skilled bassist and a good songwriter, but unfortunately he didn't find a sinergy with the rest of the band and the results are not very good.

Doug Ferguson was a prog bassist while Sinclair is more influenced by the jazz. And this is where the band was going after Moonmadness.

This album is made of some average good old-fashioned songs like "First Light", "Skyline" and "Unevensong" but has also some poor (in my opinion) tracks like "Metrognome", "Tell Me" and "Highway Of The Sun". This is what I mean for cloning the poppy side of Caravan.

A mention goes to the ambient effort of Brian Eno in "Elke" that's one of the highlights and to the symphonic title track.

"One Of These Days I'll Get An Early Night" is the first attempt to make some fusion. Not bad, but if I want to listen to some fusion a Camel album is not the first place where I search.

Not a bad album, at least not as bad as some things that will follow it. It has the merit to be distinctive of the Camel's sound of that period, but it's not the album that I would suggest to somebody who approaches Camel for the first time.

I like it because I'm a fan and a completist, but to be honest it's a 2.5 stars barely roundable to three.