I've been reading Starostin's recent (and ongoing) Camel reviews and while I find them to be a band worthy of my interest and respect, I must say that the actual quality of their music rarely bears out that promise, at least in my admittedly limited experience.

Relistening to The Snow Goose this morning, I not only must refuse to drink the Kool Aid, but would go so far as to say it's one of the few classic prog albums where I simply can't understand the hype on any level. I love the album as an idea (that of a romantic-escapist instrumental suite), and there are some promising moments in the songwriting ("Rhayader" and "Dunkirk" are particularly compelling), but the choice of instrumental tones dooms the album from the get-go. The instrumental passages veer between too-twee, second generation pseudo-classical (read: way too close to Styx for comfort) and arcade game-worth jazz fusion, with none of the atmospheric depth of the band's contemporaries. I'd love to see what a band like Caravan, with their more organic instrumental style, could do with this material.

Mirage is a little better, with a comparatively high level of sonic depth, but there's still too much emphasis on cheesy fusion and not enough on songwriting.