BREATHLESS

Breathless is a step up from Rain Dances, but still finds Camel in an awkward transitional state - this time including some honest-to-goodness into disco and funk territory in the form of Summer Lightning and You Make Me Smile. There's decent instrumental work on some tracks, such as Echoes, so lovers of Caravan's older symphonic style aren't left completely uncatered-to, whilst Down On the Farm recalls the lighter, more comedic songs from Richard Sinclair's tenure in Caravan.

On the whole, I'd say the first half of this album is a notch better than Rain Dances, and the second half more or less keeps up the same standard. It took a while to grow on me - not least because initial CD mixes seem to be a bit lackadaisical, but the Esoteric remaster teases out depths to the album I hadn't noticed before. You'll likely be disappointed if you wanted straight symphonic prog from this, but the more of a taste for late-1970s progressive pop I develop, the more I enjoy this album, and you can see it as one of those intriguing "missing link" albums between golden age symphonic prog and early neo-prog.