With Understanding Comes Appreciation
The last album I reviewed on this corner was Tanz der Lemminge by Amon Düül II, a very complex, challenging, elaborated, and definitely, an acquired-taste piece of music. This time, I'm going to review the opposite side of prog-rock music; a refined, sophisticated and delicate masterpiece, which works as an emotional transporter, bathed with plenty of sonic textures rather than experimentations. Any prog collection and beyond would not be complete without Camel's The Snow Goose. This highly inspirational and instrumental progressive gem, arguably offers Camel's most complete work. The Snow Goose reveals great soaring guitar, gorgeous keyboards, excellent percussion and bass interplay.
Camel's classic period started with The Snow Goose, an instrumental concept album based on a novella by Paul Gallico. Although there are no lyrics on the album —two songs feature wordless vocals— the music follows the emotional arc of the novella's story, which is about a lonely man named Rhayader who helps nurse a wounded snow goose back to health with the help of a young girl called Fritha he recently befriended. Once the goose is healed, it is set free, but Fritha no longer visits the man because the goose is gone. Later, Rhayader is killed in battle during the evacuation of Dunkirk. The goose returned during the battle, and it is then named La Princesse Perdue, symbolizing the hopes that can still survive even during the evils of war. With such a complex fable to tell, it is no surprise that Camel keep their improvisational tendencies reined in, deciding to concentrate on surging, intricate soundscapes that telegraph the emotion of the piece without a single word. And even though The Snow Goose is an instrumental album, it is far more accessible than some of Camel's later work, since it relies on beautiful sonic textures instead of musical experimentation as I said in my opening.
One of the basic factors that make this album so special is that it has a certain eeriness to it: the sound production gives the instrumentation (for both the band and the orchestra) a distant, at times dreamy feel, which actually helps it to relate to the fictional essence of the main concept. The whole repertoire comprised in "The Snow Goose" sounds like a fantasy itself, a beautiful fantasy that translates this moving tale of friendship, love, war and separation into a well structured sonic continuum. The fact is that all the individual pieces were actually rehearsed and recorded separately, and only when the production phase was over could the four musicians and two writers be aware of what the final result turned out to be; this anecdote can only speak very well about Latimer and Bardens' intelligence as composers and the foursome as an integrated ensemble. As I'm writing this review, I find that intelligence and integration are two words that can accurately designate the major assets of this album, all the way through, from the first smooth sounds of flowing water and electric piano at the beginning of "The Great Marsh" until the final same sounds at the end of the reprised "The Great Marsh." The display of melancholy and introspectiveness is more abundant here than in other classic Camel albums, and that might lead some listeners to some sort of boredom; it is true that even in the epic climaxes or rockier passages there is not a real display of fiery energy. But in my book, I find each and every individual piece as a vignette or sketch of a person or situation in the story (and I'm not the first one to say this), so, as I stated before, this album is basically a tale "literally" translated into the language of music, and is how this gem has to be digested to its better appreciation. The lyrical "Rhayader" and the expressionist "Rhayader Goes to Town" are timeless Camel classics. Other highlights are: the majestic title track and its augmented variation "La Princesse Perdue," the dramatic "Dunkirk" and the piano solo number "Fritha Alone," whose sadness is almost palpable. Furthermore, while picking out individual tracks is not what this album is all about, since it was conceived as a conceptual music novella, the tune that inevitably always gets me goosebumps is "Rhayader Alone;" just listen to it, and unless you have oil running through your veins, there's no way you feel transported into a reflexive trance mood while reminding you, that embracing to be alone and accepting you as you are is actually a great thing; the later unfortunately has been lost mostly in our times due superficial and demanding social media.