Review Summary: This is a great debut. The beginning of an amazing ongoing career.
“Camel” is the eponymous debut studio album of Camel that was released in 1973. The line up on the album is Andrew Latimer, Peter Bardens, Doug Ferguson and Andrew Ward. The album had also the participation of Eddie and Tony Cox.
Camel is a British progressive rock band that was formed in Guildford, Surrey, U.K. in 1971. The band was formed when the ex-former members of the band The Brew, Latimer, Ferguson and Ward recruited Bardens. After an initial gig to fulfill an agreement with the name On, they changed their name to Camel and played their first gig on December 4 at Waltham Forest Technical College in London. Camel was one of the best British progressive rock bands of the mid of the 70’s. The sound of the band was dominated by Latimer’s guitar/vocals/flute and Bardens’ tasteful keyboards.
In 1972 the band signed with MCA Records and the result of it was this eponymous debut musical work “Camel”. Here, Camel was still finding their signature sound. However, Camel’s debut album already shows the typical characteristics of the band’s classic style with long instrumental passages, carried by Bardens’ keyboards and Latimer’s guitar, and restrained vocals. What’s still missing on their debut is that Latimer doesn’t use the flute yet, what would become one of the trdemarks of the band. At this point, Bardens and his grand, sweeping organ dominate the band’s sound. Their self-titled debut was a quite rough and unpolished product, but demonstrated the band’s ability to write very strong vocal melodies combined with lengthy and taseful instrumental passages. The combination of Barden’s melodic keyboards and Latimer’s guitar is just superb. With Ferguson’s fine bass and Ward’s top notch drumming, here we have the main ingredients of their music that can already be seen on this debut work from the band. We can’t forget this first work still features the two first classic Camel’s tracks, the beautiful “Mystic Queen” and the catchy “Never Let Go”.
“Camel” has seven tracks. “Slow Yourself Down” is a great opener, and for me, is the third best track of the all album. It features a great organ work that is very well accompanied with a relaxed vocal work. A great rhythm section was also created. “Mystic Queen” is, for me, the second best track on the album. It’s sublime. It has a great organ work, perfectly accompanied by a tasteful guitar solo. It has also a great performance on the drums. “Six Ate” is, for me, the weakest point on the album. I’m not saying that is a bad song. But, it can be, sometimes, a little bit repetitive. That makes of it the lower point on the album. “Separation” is the shortest song on the album. It has some slow parts and a powerful and superb ending. This is another great song. “Never Let Go” gave its name to a live album of the band. It’s one of the lengthiest tracks on the album. It’s my favourite song on the album and one of my favourite songs of the band too. It’s a wonderful piece with the presence of Bardens on vocals. He gave a great keyboard solo very well accompanied by a marvellous Latimer’s flute work. “Curiosity” has a strong bass line. It’s a typical Camel’s track with a good composition. It’s another great song, in the same line of the rest of the album. “Arubaluba” is the closing track of the album. It’s an instrumental, the lengthiest song on the album. It’s one of its best songs the fourth best, for me. It’s a strong track with a great guitar performance, an interesting organ work and a good complementary job made by Fergusson and Ward.
My CD version has also two bonus tracks. Despite the first bonus track “Never Let Go”, doesn’t bring anything new to the album, because is simply a shorter single version of the original track, with the second bonus track I can’t say the same. “Homage To The God Of Light” is a 19 minutes live version of an original track written by Bardens, which was originally recorded on his solo studio album “The Answer” released in 1970. It’s a great piece superiorly performed live. This an extended version that is full of free improvisations by all band’s members, showing their competence. The track was recorded live at the mythical Marquee Club at 29th October 1974, and was previously unreleased. Unfortunately, it’s shocking and criminal to think that this live version of “Homage To The God Of Light” was hidden for so many years.
Conclusion: “Camel” is a great debut from a great band. It has two tracks that deserve 5.0 “Mystic Queen” and “Never Let Go”, four tracks that deserve 4.0 “Slow Yourself Down”, “Separation”, “Curiosity” and “Arubaluba” and one track that only deserves 3.0 “Six Ate”. So, the final average of this album is between 4.0 and 4.5. So, I decided to rate it with 4.5. Sincerely, I think that only is missing very few to can achieve the status of a masterpiece, which fortunately would happen, with their three following studio albums. This is a great starting point if you want to listen to Camel as a newbie. It’s an album very catchy and easy to get into, especially for the beginners. It’s an amazing work, especially as a debut. Don’t be afraid by the fact that it isn’t so well known and popular, compared with some of their other studio albums. It’s a great album, probably the most simple, pure and naive of all their studio albums. I deeply recommend it.
Music was my first love.
John Miles (Rebel)
