THE SNOW GOOSE

This completely instrumental third album is probably CAMEL's best known, or at least it was their triumphant breakthrough. It is perhaps slightly more accessible than Mirage preceding it, but not necessarily better. Moonmadness following it is clearly better in my opinion, and the best example of good balance between instrumental and sung CAMEL material. Yes, they were generally better without vocals which were never their strongest side, but the album tends to get a bit boring if it's completely without vocals. That's the case here.

Inspired by a Paul Gallico novella about relationships between a man called Rhayader, a girl, and a goose in a countryside at wartime, the album tries to tell the story in music. I have read that book, naturally because of this album (in English; not translated to Finnish which I truly don't wonder, I wasn't very impressed). By the way, I have read that the group voted for the source book and Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf lost the election. I'd be very curious how they would have managed to put THAT deep psychologic novel into music! Well, they succeeded with Snow Goose and the music has an airy feel very suitable for the story. But perhaps that story itself is rather thin and naive to be a best possible source of inspiration. And isn't it a children's book anyway? How proggy and exciting album could one make of it?

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy this album a lot. It includes marvelous tracks with soaring melodies. But it also includes some tracks in between that either sound like fillers or repeat the same motif too much (that's why I doubt if the book is full enough of drama). This repetitiveness here and there annoys me, but as a whole the album is a well crafted suite with various moods. it has a symphonic feel, and the band did perform it accompanied by a large orchestra. For an advanced proghead this may be a bit boring, but if you want to introduce melodic prog to someone who listens to light classical music rather than rock, this album could be succesful. How else it could have been a bestseller in the first place!