Wednesday 11 August Thursday 12 August Friday 13 August Saturday 14 August Sunday 15 August Monday 16 August Tuesday 17 August Wednesday 18 August Thursday 19 August Friday 20 August Saturday 21 August Sunday 22 August Monday 23 August Tuesday 24 August Wednesday 25 August Thursday 26 August Friday 27 August Saturday 28 August Sunday 29 August Monday 30 August Tuesday 31 August Wednesday 1 September Thursday 2 September Friday 3 September Saturday 4 September Sunday 5 September Monday 6 September Tuesday 7 September Wednesday 8 September Thursday 9 September Friday 10 September Saturday 11 September Sunday 12 September Monday 13 September Tuesday 14 September Wednesday 15 September Thursday 16 September Friday 17 September Saturday 18 September Sunday 19 September Monday 20 September Tuesday 21 September Wednesday 22 September Thursday 23 September Friday 24 September Saturday 25 September Sunday 26 September Monday 27 September Tuesday 28 September Wednesday 29 September Thursday 30 September Friday 1 October Saturday 2 October Sunday 3 October Monday 4 October Tuesday 5 October Wednesday 6 October Thursday 7 October Friday 8 October Saturday 9 October Sunday 10 October Monday 11 October Tuesday 12 October Wednesday 13 October Thursday 14 October Friday 15 October Saturday 16 October Sunday 17 October Monday 18 October Tuesday 19 October Wednesday 20 October Thursday 21 October Friday 22 October Chris Rainbow is a pretty generic sounding vocalist without much distinct sounding character to his delivery, so the instrumental tracks are definitely the most interesting on the album.
As such an interesting concept, that could have worked well with more insteresing music to accompany the concept. The opening Waltz is a short waltz that sets the mood for Camel's most gloomy album in their entire career.
Refugee is an excellent sample of the concise song writing with focus on lyrical content that Camel has opted for here. Next on is the high point, Vopos finds Camel doing a dark and almost new wave interpretation of their sound.
In the days of vinyl albums, this AOR moment spoiled the album for me. Luckily we have 'next' buttons and remote controls now! The title track is a shortened take on a song like Ice , a lyrical guitar solo that Latimer and Gilmour had a patent right on back in the days. With West Berlin and Fingertips Latimer adds two more examples of poignant song writing to his canon.
These songs have been with me ever since I heard the Pressure Points live album when I was 13 and I still love them as much as back then. In fact they serve as landmark songs setting the boundary for seemingly simple but effective song writing.
Missing and After Words are ok but rather forgettable instrumentals. Sometimes I like it though, depends a bit of my mood. Whatever way I feel about it, the reissue will rinse any sour taste left by it by closing the album with an extended version of the astounding instrumental Pressure Points , just the way Latimer had wanted the album to end originally.
Unfortunately, this album wasn't the start of something beautiful but turned out to be Camel's last album to capture my interest for ages. There's no guarantee you will love it if you liked Camel's vintage years but if you're not an 80's-basher you might give it a try. The songwriting here is everything that The Single Factor collection lacks: good melodies, good hooks, interesting lyrics.
Vapors for exemple is a very dark and powerful track that would fit nice on any of the best Depeche Mode LPs. And so it goes: Fingerprints and West Berlin are also very good. The ending solo of The Long Goodbye is also very good, but I found the tune itself a bit too mellow again the shadow of the Alan Parsons Project is quite obvious.
But eventually he came back with a string of very good albums in the next decade. But this album hinted some of the fine stuff that would appear in future releases. My rating? Stationary Traveller has no bad tracks. Even if the majority is more pop than prog, they are still very good songs. Maybe not enough to make it essential, but still above average.
A catchy tune. A good rhythm to this one. Guitar before 4 minutes. I like the synths. A catchy tune with lots of synths and guitar. Some pan-pipe say what? Sax from Collins after 2 minutes. A guitar solo after 2 minutes. Bass joins in then vocals. It kicks in after a minute. Contrasts continue. Nice guitar 4 minutes in. For me this is barely a 3 star album, probably 2 stars in reality.
First of all this is an excellent album under all the possible points of view. It's in my personal top 50 list and I really loved it at the first spin. This could be considered the first Andy Latimer's solo work, as also Andy Ward had to resign during the recording of the previous "Single Factor".
This is the third Camel's concept album after "The snow goose" quite unusual for an instrumental album being considered a concept and Nude. It's about the Berlin Wall and it's the story of a person who decides to leave everything he has on the East to try to escape to the West, as many people did in the real world, some losing their lives since when the "door was closed" until the fall of the wall. The live version on the omonimous live album is longer and features a long section of fretless bass.
Nothing special. The bad is that with this album Andy tried to renew the Camel's sound and make it more conformant with the standards ot the early 80s, so electronic drums and fairlight are almost everywhere in the album. The good is that this change in the sound is counter-balanced by Andy's musical skill, so at the end this is not disturbing. The guitar on the solo sounds a bit "Dire Straits", but it's well inserted in the song's structure and it's exactly how it has to sound here.
One of the best songs of the album. I have the impression that the sequence of the songs on the album is the same on which they have been written. This songs clsoes a sort of trilogy with the previous two so now the story plot is clear. Now we are at the last track of the first sife of the vinyl. I remember the first listening made me think to Hotel California, but it hasn't anything to do with that song apart some similarities in the main sequence of chords.
The guitar solo is probably one of the best ever played by Andy. The B side of the vinyl starts with "West Berlin" I don't know if a single has been released from this album, but if one, this song would have been perfect for the A sdie.
I think it can represent the whole album. The same year George Michael had a big success with Careless Whisper. I don't want to compare the two songs but the two sax solos have similar purposes. I think the singer is Andy himself, as the live version sung by Chris Rainbow is not as good as the studio one.
They lead into the closure of the story. This album doesn't feature epic tracks: the longest is less than 6 minutes, but is not just a collection of songs. It's deeply into the 80s, also because of the concept. The fall of the wall closed that decade and after this album began the lawsuite which temporarily stopped Camel's activity.
Without the attempt to sound mainstream it would have been an absolute masterpiece, now it sounds a bit dated. Stationary Traveller is their 10th album in 11 years of career, nothing bad I would say. The album itself isn't that bad, is actually good. If you're able to completely separate this album from their 70's and albums like Mirage But one thing bothers me a lot, the vocals.
They are dead, not a single drop of emotion on it, in none of all the ten tracks. And that pretty much kills the overall sound in Stationary Traveller The album begins with Pressure Points , a slightly Pink Floyd-ish but all to short instrumental piece. With a nice Andrew Latimer guitar solo, this track is the only one on the album that I can bear listening to repeatedly.
The rest is a pile of eighties synth-pop, that most closely reminds me of Roger Hodgson's post Supertamp work. You know. Fairly well crafted, but immediately forgettable pop songs. If there was more than a faint hint of prog here and no, slightly weird eighties synth sounds don't qualify , I might have rated this better. But no. This is what was wrong with 80's music. Like many of Camel's studio albums, this is another conceptual album.
This time is about the Cold War and the story is centred on the trials of East German refugees attempting to cross the famous and shameful Berlin Wall who divided the city between East and West. I'm perfectly convinced this was a matter very nostalgic for Latimer that made him to release this album. The nostalgia is present all over the album, and the cover itself invokes a very desolate, desperate and despondent post war Germany, a solitary young woman amidst the aging architecture of a city scarred by the war and its numerous effects.
By this time, and as happened with their previous studio album 'The Single Factor', Camel was essentially an Andrew Latimer's band. The first track 'Pressure Points' written by Latimer is an instrumental short song that introduces us into the album and also establishes immediately the atmosphere of what will be the music on the album. This is a very beautiful way to open the album. The second track 'Refugee' written by Latimer and Susan Hoover is a good and melodious rock song.
It's a very solid track with a modern sound with electronic drums but where the presence of Latimer's guitar is constant. So, the final result is a very well balanced track. The third track 'Vopos' written by Latimer and Hoover is a very good and interesting song. It's a very dark song where the lyrics are highly dramatic but very melodious too.
This is, in my humble opinion, a song in the new wave style that sounds modern and where the electronic drumming gives the rhythm. The fourth track 'Cloak And Dagger Man' written by Latimer and Hoover is another electronic song that sounds in the new wave pop style with a very fast and frenetic rhythm. This is a song written in a more commercial style that reminds us so many other bands of those times.
The fifth track 'Stationary Traveller' is the title track and was written by Latimer. This is another instrumental song that represents the return to the typical sound of Camel. Here we have the guitar sound that reminds me the sound of Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits, the beautiful sound of pan pipes and the typical and unique Latimer's sound, probably featuring one of the best guitar solos performed by him. Until now, this is the best song on the album where we can see Latimer at his best.
This is without any doubt one of the high moments of this album too. The sixth track 'West Berlin' written by Latimer and Hoover is a very interesting song with a nice rhythm and also with good musical passages. This is another song clearly influenced by the new wave style, with fine textures and also very well produced.
I think we can feel here the presence of Alan Parsons' hand. The seventh track 'Fingertips' written by Latimer and Hoover is a very beautiful, melodic and cool ballad. This is a love song, one of the most commercial songs of the album, and despite has the return of the nice sound of the saxophone of Collins, doesn't represent one of highest points of the album. The eighth track 'Missing' written by Latimer is another instrumental song based on electronic drumming. This is a very beautiful song with very satisfactory melodic changes that remains in our ears.
I think this is a song more in the neo-prog vein. The ninth track 'After Words' written by Scherpenzeel is again an instrumental song, very short, and is a kind of an introduction to the last song on the album. This is one of the nice moments of the album, only performed by piano and accordion.
The tenth and last track 'Long Goodbyes' written by Latimer and Hoover is a very epic and mellow ballad, probably too much mellow, but it's, in anyway, a very nice way to ending this curious and interesting musical work, from the 80's.
Conclusion: Like our colleague greenback, I also like Camel's sound of the 80's and I also agree with him when he says that Camel knew how to cope and introduce the new technology into their music.
Probably only Camel and Genesis, of the greatest progressive bands of the 70's, were capable of doing that. So, this is a nice album of the 80's with some very good songs. But fortunately, great things would happen in the following years, for Camel and for the progressive rock music in general.
Their four next studio albums are all great and represent the returning of Camel to their classic musical roots. Prog is my Ferrari. With drummer Andy Ward now effectiv An improvement over poppy Alan Parsons-like output but still remaining distant from bold "Nude" or previous prog- rock work.
On one hand, we have decent instrumentals like "Pressure Points" or title track with distinctive guitar I absolutely adore two of the songs off this album, the title track featuring a beautiful guitar solo from Andy Latimer and the closing track, Long Goodbyes.
While the other songs on the album aren't quite as strong, this is a vast improvement over their previous effort, The Single Factor. As I go forward in time with my personal discovery of Camel I have arrived to Stationary Traveller, and have become more and more convinced I knew it before, but now I'm convinced that this was not the decade for prog rock.
And my realization of the ups and downs in this band's discography a After the somewhat failure of The Single Factor, an album I genuinely enjoy, Camel returned to the concept album, after having success with it with Nude, Latimer wrote another semi-rock opera based again on a true and compelling story.
While most would find the Berlin wall and the division and op It wasn't love at first listen for me but I initially at least thought it was good and better than it's predecessor "The Single Factor". The beginning of the album begins with an instrumental high-flying, guitar tart and perfect sound. It then waits for the second title is from the outset of a high quality album of Camel is very sophisticated, quiet and facing hard fm while respecting his Camel.
The album shortly be considered by This is my 4th review of a Camel album as I work my way randomly through them all, or at least all of them I am familiar with. Stationary Traveler was an album I really enjoyed when it first appeared but over time, my appreciation has lessened some. Maybe I have come to discover that it is som Track Listing. Pressure Points. Cloak and Dagger Man. Stationary Traveller. West Berlin. After Words. Long Goodbyes.
Styles Art Rock Prog-Rock. Recording Location Riverside Studios, England. Introspection Reflection. Spotify Amazon.
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