I CAN SEE YOUR HOUSE FROM HERE

The troll under the bridge would let out a loud "harumph" each time some passerby would call this CAMEL's best album. "Philistines", he'd mutter, unaccustomed to work. Give 'em the Spiegel gift certificate because for them the curtain is too terrible to contemplate. Until one day, while listening to this album, smoothing out a fresh piece of paper with his hand to catalog what would surely be its forthcoming shortcomings, the troll caught sight of his own reflection in the water. And the face he saw smiled back at him, wading in the pleasurable moment of "Wait", the song's kinetic energy unleashed in giddy little wavelets.

And thus we come to our moral prematurely: that a treasure can be buried by an otherwise invisible bias. My loyalty to an old "Mirage" prevents me from crowning "I Can See Your House From Here", and common sense tells me that I should save my breath for such things until hearing "Breathless". Yet I can see where some listeners would champion this album. Andy Latimer's guitar work is inspired, and CAMEL's gifts have seldom been so succinctly packaged. It's a different chapter than the original foursome's smoke-borne flotsam, but not unlike "Rain Dances" seen on a brighter day. With three new members (plus the immovable Andys), CAMEL's allegiance to the old Gods was negated, freeing them to pursue ALAN PARSONS PROJECT in a mix of vocals and instrumentals more suited to short attention spans.

In that context, "I Can See Your House From Here" is a triumph, prescient in some spots ("Wait" is about gambling, the theme for APP's next album), tuneful at every turn, made approachable by a newfound sense of humor, and possessed of some lovely instrumentals ("Ice", "Eye of the Storm"). That CAMEL didn't ride off into the sunset of commercial success after this is not a reflection on the music, but on the fact that they hadn't built up a brand for this sort of thing. Old fans, trolls the lot of us, might cringe to see CAMEL's strong backbone carry such a commercial load, clinging to the familiar "Hymn To Her" with a sigh of what might have been. But on this day, in this moment, I can see the wonder of it all, and it's a wonder I didn't see it before.