Andy Latimer and Pete Bardens conceptualise the departure of generations from Ireland to seek prosterity in the New World.
If you can imagine Justin Hayward had joined Clannad. Yeah? Well that’s the sound you get.
Harbour of Tears is an interesting album from Camel’s catalogue. You can hear the aural fetuses of themes developed further in later albums such as Stationary Traveller and Rajaz. Also, unlike with earlier Camel albums, gone are the Tolkienesque overtones and there is actually some really good guitar work from Latimer.
It’s a real shame about Camel. They could have been much bigger than they were but with the looming brooding shadow of punk and new romance and their bastard child corporate saccharine pop, progressive rock bands like Camel were never going to break out of daddies record collection before the core band members died off. A condition made worse by the record company’s DMCA writs fired out at fans trying to entice newer uninitiated fans into the temple of prog on social media platforms.
It’s almost as if they don’t want any publicity…
So no fan video for you, freeloaders. Instead have a cover version…..
These Greatest Hits albums feel almost never ending.
Had I started this project at “G” back in 2012, at this point we would be at Gothic Compilation Vol 342. But rather than shed even more readership, I opted to weed out those compilations and reduced them to the selection that follows.
Fee Waybill and the guys regroup and return following a ten year hiatus and departure from Capitol Records with their first album on the Critique label.
Era are another of those bands jumping on the nu-age Enigma bandwagon complete with choral and world music overtones. Indeed, Era (or +ERA+ as they like to stylise themselves) sit nicely between Enigma and Deep Forest.
If You’re Feeling Sinister – Belle & Sebastian #606
by stegzyAt the time, I saw Belle & Sebastian as a kind of hipster bollocks band. Loved by trendies and soul patch sporting arts students and with such prejudice, I wasn’t all that bothered by them. Of course, this was in my late, uninformed, uncultured, blinkered, pre-internet, pre-university, unenlightened, pre-millennial twenties where most of my world still revolved around Liverpool, a shit office job and regularly going to the pub with similarly minded folk and talking shite.
Of course, hipster pals were already hinting that I would like the band long before I’d actually listened to the album. Indeed, when I met him, Hipster Nick was already much of a keen fan and Telly Expert Tim, who would often talk about how he was into Belle & Sebastian before anyone else had even conceived of the idea of a band called Belle & Sebastian and that, besides which, they weren’t as good now, anyway, since Stuart had left the band, would sneer at anyone who clearly had only recently become a fan. The thing was, this time they were right; I did like the band.
Fortunately, Stuart was still in the band at the point of releasing If You’re Feeling Sinister and Tim was quite right, the band’s early albums are, in my opinion, the better ones. Much in the same way that Syd Barratt’s influenced Pink Floyd albums are distinctly different to those that come later and indeed, after, Roger Waters. Well crafted, the songs on the album have a unique sound with a lyrical poetic genius that is lacking from the majority of modern bands some of them define adolescent exploratory gay sentiment while others reflect on angst, paranoia or obsession.
A genius of an album!
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1996 Belle & Sebastian Chamber Pop Indie Jeepster