Camel - I Can See Your House from Here
On October 29, 1979, "I Can See Your House from Here", the seventh studio album by "Camel", was released.
It started with a joke that was making the rounds in the late seventies. Jesus, hanging on the cross, calls out to his disciple Peter. Peter makes his way to him with great difficulty, sure he is about to hear the word of God, and then he gets the punchline: "Peter, I can see your house from here." "Camel" took the joke and sent it into space. On the cover, a crucified astronaut floats above the Earth, an homage to Salvador Dalí's 1951 painting "Christ of Saint John of the Cross", at a time when Monty Python's "Life of Brian" was showing everyone how thin the line is between humor and blasphemy. In hindsight, it is also an accurate description of the album itself: a band looking at its old house from a distance.
That house had meanwhile been emptied. After "Breathless", Peter Bardens, the keyboardist who had built the sound of "Camel" together with Andrew Latimer from day one, left, and bassist Richard Sinclair went too. Latimer and Andy Ward, the two remaining founding members, recruited Colin Bass on bass and two keyboardists: Jan Schelhaas, who came from "Caravan" and had already joined the "Breathless" tour, and the American Kit Watkins of "Happy the Man". Bass would become Latimer's loyal companion for many years.
Production was handed to Rupert Hine, the man who a decade later would produce "Presto" and "Roll the Bones" for "Rush". The recordings took place in the summer of 1979 at Farmyard Studios in Little Chalfont, in an Elizabethan country house that also served as a residential studio, and the orchestral overdubs were added at AIR Studios in London. Latimer later recalled that Hine was great fun to work with, full of life and energy, and that the album was made fairly quickly. One of its working titles was "Endangered Species", a name that would have suited a prog band at the end of 1979 perfectly. Among the guests, Mel Collins stood out on saxophone, and Phil Collins also appeared on percussion. On the American sleeve he is credited "courtesy of Atlantic Records".
The result sounds like an argument between two bands: one wants the radio, the other wants the horizon. Side one opens with "Wait" and "Your Love Is Stranger Than Mine", and on both the vocals come from an unexpected direction, the new bassist Colin Bass. The second is a tight three-and-a-half-minute pop number, written jointly by four members of the band, with an alto saxophone solo by Mel Collins. Next comes "Eye of the Storm", an instrumental by Kit Watkins on which Andy Ward plays layers of military snare drums, an effect you won't find on many prog albums.
And then, in seven minutes and fifty-two seconds, "Camel" reminds us who it is. "Who We Are", written by Latimer, who also sings it and plays flute and autoharp on it, opens and closes with an orchestral arrangement by Simon Jeffes, founder of the "Penguin Cafe Orchestra". The title sounds almost like a question the band is asking itself in 1979, and the answer arrives as a sad, chamber-like melody.
The song "Survival" is a short orchestral interlude of about a minute that leads into "Hymn to Her", a gentle song written by Latimer and Schelhaas and sung by Latimer over flute and autoharp. After it the album changes direction sharply, and the decade along with it. "Neon Magic" is new wave by Latimer, Schelhaas and Vivienne McAuliffe, a kind of reply from the band to the punk that failed to bring it down, followed by "Remote Romance", written by Latimer and Watkins over EMS sequencers and loops by Ward, which sounds like Gary Numan wandering by mistake into a "Camel" session. The lyrics describe push-button love, perhaps the earliest forecast of virtual dating ever written in the catalog of a prog band.
The song was released as a single on October 26, 1979, and on its flip side were two glances backward: "Rainbow's End" from "Breathless" and "Tell Me" from "Rain Dances". It didn't help, and the single failed to chart.
The album is sealed by "Ice", ten minutes and seventeen seconds that prove the old house is still standing. The piece is built slowly, on piano and keyboards, until Latimer's guitar rises and leaves the listener short of breath. Tradition has it that the solo was recorded in a single pass, and reissue descriptions credit Phil Collins with percussion on the track as well. It is the same solo we mentioned in our review of "Rajaz" as the inspiration for the ending of "Lawrence", and anyone who has heard both knows how much emotion can be squeezed out of a single note.
In the UK the album reached No. 45 and stayed in the chart for three weeks; in Norway it reached No. 18 and in Sweden No. 36. The tour began on October 8 in Brighton and ended on January 29, 1980 in Tokyo. These are not the numbers of a stadium band, and among fans the album remains contentious to this day, but it is evidence of a band that was willing to try, and even to stumble, rather than repeat itself.
After the album, Latimer returned to the world of the concept album with "Nude" in 1981, and when the pressure from the record company grew, "The Single Factor" followed as well. In hindsight, "I Can See Your House from Here" is the moment when "Camel" could still laugh at itself. It looks at its home from a great height, and thanks to the distance sees it a little differently, yet still knows every window. And anyone who has listened to "Ice" knows those windows are still lit.
For Listening: Spotify
"Face/Off" - Israel's Rock Blog
Comments