Review: Camel – Stationary Traveller (1984)

Stationary Traveller is Camel’s 10th studio album.

The 70s and 80s were a difficult time for many progressive bands, and so it was for Camel, founded in 1973. The band lost two of its founding members in the late 70s, which at least to some extent contributed to a decline in the quality of the music. First bassist Doug Ferguson left in 1977 and the very next year keyboard player Peter Bardens made the same decision. Breathless (1978) and I Can See Your House from Here(1979) were, at best, uneven albums groping for a lost direction and the subsequent concept album Nude (1981) was not much better. The real collapse in standards came with 1982’s The Single Factor. At this point, drummer Andy Ward was also out of the picture with substance abuse and mental health problems, and lone guitarist/vocalist Andrew Latimer, left on his own, tried desperately to keep the camel on the trail and, under pressure from the label, took the band in a more commercial direction. With little success. Built with studio musicians, The Single Factor sounded more like b-grade The Alan Parsons Project than Camel and sold no better than the band’s previous albums.

The Single Factor was an experiment in which success was sought by making an album consisting solely of songs with single potential. When this failed, Latimer decided to take Camel in a slightly more ambitious direction and Stationary Traveller was, like many of the band’s earlier albums, built as a concept album. The album’s theme evokes the loss of freedom caused by the Berlin Wall and the paranoia of authoritarian East Germany during the Cold War. The lyrics are mainly written by Susan Hoover, girlfriend of guitarist Latimer, the only original member of the band at this stage.

Like The Single Factory (1982), Stationary Traveller is for the most part a pure pop record that only occasionally veers towards progressive rock, but this time the song material is of higher quality and the pop influences blend more naturally with the familiar Camel style. The theme that unites the songs also adds a certain poise and a certain common thread.

Read also: Review: Rush – Grace Under Pressure (1984)

The songs on The Single Factor were made with varying combinations of studio musicians, but for Stationary Traveller Latimer assembled a real band with a few guests. Haydn Bendall (operating Fairlight CMI, borrowed from Kate Bush ) and Ton Scherpenzeel, formerly of Dutch prog band Kayak, were responsible for the synthesizers. The rhythm section is led by bassist David Paton and drummer Paul Burgess. Officially, the band at this point included only Scherpenzeel and Burgess, along with Latimer.

Stationary Traveller will also feature guests Mel Collins on saxophone and vocalist Chris Rainbow. Rainbow sings the few songs that Latimer himself couldn’t quite manage.

Stationary Traveller has a rather sombre and melancholic atmosphere, in keeping with its subject matter, but it cannot be described as dark. A significant part of the songs are quite upbeat and the very 80’s sounds bring an upbeat lightness. There’s humour in there too. Mostly unintentional. If you suffer from a severe allergy to 80’s sounds Stationary Traveller can be a bit of a shock, but I think the sounds work surprisingly well in context. The mood is sometimes cheesy, but almost always entertainingly so. The sound is generally dominated by Scherpenzeel’s synthesizers, Latimer’s melodic guitar, dryly declarative vocals, and drums with a steady rhythm and a bit lifeless sound. The description may not sound particularly appealing, but somehow the combination works in the case of Stationary Traveller and the atmosphere of the album is quite unique, even if it is partly made up of rather clichéd 80s production techniques.

Stationary Traveller successfully balances somewhere between progressive rock and synth-pop, but leaning more towards the latter. The most successful moments of the album are the songs that move on the side of straight pop.

Of the pop songs, ”Refugee”, ”Clock And Dagger Man” and ”West Berlin” are particularly successful.

”Refugee” is an elegant mid-tempo song that sounds a bit like Dire Straits with its guitar picking. This impression is not diminished by Latimer’s laconic vocal style.

”Cloak And Dagger Man”, on the other hand, is the most raucous track on the album. It’s a really entertaining synthesizer-driven romp where Scherpenzeel’s wild synthesizer runs towards the end of the song are absolutely amazing to listen to in all their irreverence. Chris Rainbow’s wider vocal range on ”Cloak And Dagger Man” brings a nice change of pace from Latimer’s declarative style that largely dominates the rest of the album.

”West Berlin” is an absolute highlight of Stationary Traveller. This excellent song manages to capture the story of the protagonist’s defiant and wistful dream of freedom that comes when he finally manages to defect to the other side of the wall in West Berlin. Pounding along with steadily synthesised drums, the song features a truly stirring chorus. Latimer again sings in a passionlessly declarative way, which you might think would be the wrong approach for this story, but somehow the result works. There’s a strange charm to ”West Berlin” that I can’t explain because for all its simplicity, this kind of music doesn’t usually appeal to me.

And I’m looking out over West Berlin
Feeling freer now than I’ve ever been
When the sun sets over West Berlin
I’ll be leaving, I can’t come back again
And I’m looking out over West Berlin
West Berlin

The track ”Fingertrips”, which follows ”West Berlin”, is also an excellent case, despite its really anemic rhythm track. However, the song’s wistful melody and Paton’s tasty fretless bass compensate sufficiently and the chorus of this song is also great. Collins’ skilful saxophone solo is a little lacklustre, yet remains just on the right side of good taste.

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The album also features four instrumental songs interspersed between the sung tracks. The most delicious of these is the delicate and slightly new age title track, which features Latimer’s acoustic guitar strumming over a synthesizer backdrop, a subtle waft of panpipes and a determined electric guitar solo at the end. The album-opening, airy and airy ”Pressure Points” serves as a stylish intro to all that is to come, but the album-closing ”Missing” and ”After Words” remain somewhat uninteresting background music.

Not all the songs on Stationary Traveller are really hits, but sometimes the atmosphere is a bit stilted. The biggest weakness of the album is its extremely simplistic drum tracks, which work in some songs, but sometimes make the music seem stale and monotonous. Despite this, the album is quite pleasant to listen to throughout its duration. In fact, Stationary Traveller is easily the best Camel album since 1976’s Moonmadness, in my opinion.

Wrapped in stylish sepia-toned covers, the Stationary Traveller, despite its pop spirit, was not commercially successful. Latimer was more or less forced to put the band on ice until the 90s. Having lost their record deal, the band returned as a home-grown, self-run project with rather anaemic results.

Best tracks: ”Refugee”, ”Vopos”, ”West Berlin”, ”Stationary Traveller”, ”Cloak And Dagger Man”, ”Fingertips”

Author: JANNE YLIRUUSI

Rating: 4 out of 5.
Read also: Review: U.K. – Danger Money (1979)

Tracks

  1. Pressure Points 2:09
  2. Refugee 3:47
  3. Vopos 5:32
  4. Cloak and Dagger Man 3:55
  5. Stationary Traveller 5:34
  6. West Berlin 5:10
  7. Fingertips 4:29
  8. Missing 4:22
  9. After Words 2:01
  10. Long Goodbyes 5:14

Camel:

Andy Latimer: electric guitar, acoustic guitar, 12-string guitar, bass guitar, synthesizers, piano, drum synthesizer, pan flute, vocals Ton Scherpenzeel: organ, grand piano, Prophet synthesizer, Yamaha CS-80, Juno 60, Korg, PPG, accordion Paul Burgess: drums

Guests:

David Paton: bass guitar (3, 4), untaped bass guitar (7, 10), backing vocals Chris Rainbow: vocals (A 4, 10) Mel Collins: saxophone (7) Haydn Bendall: Fairlight CMI (1, 3), PPG synthesizer (8)

Producer: Andrew Latimer
Label: Decca

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