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Rating: I have always thought that Jim Morrison was far ahead of most of his contemporaries and that snippets of his lyrics were meant also (or especially) for people of future generations. So, in my own small way, I hope you'll forgive me if I make the line "Carry me Caravan, take me away…" my own, to illustrate the effect that the Sinclair cousins' band has on me.
Their fairy-tale jazz-rock with strongly bucolic hues, their crystalline and sunny melodies that lubricate even the most progressive parts, making them flow fresh and vital like a high mountain stream, and the great class with which they venture into the most exquisitely pop episodes, literally manage to carry me away. Not so much in space, but rather in time.
A sort of delightful Proustian madeleine, the Caravan, champions of the more accessible spirit of the "Canterbury Scene", have the power to make me relive sensations and emotions from my childhood and adolescence where amazement and curiosity, even for the most insignificant things (which, in reality, it’s good to remember, are not insignificant, not even now), wrapped the days in a perpetual enchantment.
Listening to "If I Could do it All Over Again, I’d do All Over You", becomes, for me, a tour into the past: songs like "And I Wish I Were Stoned/Don’t Worry" and the medley "With an Ear to the Ground you Can Make it/Martinian/Only Cox/Reprise" have the same naive exuberance, fervent hope, and sweet anguish of a boy falling in love for the first time or preparing to explore a mysterious forest. The joyful title track pairs with "Hello Hello" and in their immediacy and light-heartedness, they are as clear as the eyes of a child can be. The "tiny" "Asforteri", seems to be a real counting rhyme used when designating the boy who, in hide and seek, had to find all the others.
The Caravan also know how to create more "mature" moods: "As I Feel I Die" is a progressive gallop where organ and guitar run wild, and in the fantastical "Can’t be Long Now/Francoise/For Richard/Warlock", the long jazz-rock digression is flavoured with sax and flute, making the piece resemble an intricate and surprising hedge maze.
The delicate conclusion of "Limits" brings me back to the present, but when this present becomes too heavy or pressing, I know I can always retreat here, into this album. It is important for me to remember how, as a child, I looked at the world and what can I tell you: "Take me Caravan…Yes, I know you can".
Tracklist Lyrics Samples and Videos
02 And I Wish I Were Stoned / Don't Worry (08:11)
Once I had a dream, nothing else to do
Sat and played my mind in time with all of you
Got down in the road
Crossed my heart and cried
When you told me how you`d love
To live and not to die
Why why why?
I wish I were stoned on my mind
Why why why, oh why?
Dreamed I saw a man walked upon the sea
Dreamed it once again and saw that he was me
Looking close at me I looked a lot like you
Knowing where to go but not quite what to do
Why why why?
I wish I were stoned on my mind
Why why why, oh why?
Give me all your love in a smile
And I`ll tell you what I`m thinking
Let me see the world through your eyes
And I`ll show you where I`m sitting
Once I had a dream, nothing else to do
Sat and played my mind in time with all of you
Got down in the road
Crossed my heart and cried
When you told me how you`d love
To kill and not to die
Why why why?
I wish I were stoned on my mind
Why why why, oh why?
Don't Worry
Don't worry about me
I've got all that I need
And I'm singing my song to the sky
You know how it feels
With the breeze of the sun in your eyes
Not minding that time's passing by
I've got all and more
My smile, just as before
Is all that I carry with me
I talk to myself
I need nobody else
I'm lost and I'm mine, yes I'm free
03 As I Feel I Die (05:13)
With a song on my mind
I'm thinking of you
Through the dreams of a million eyes
I'll stand still with you
And wait till I find
The world that you're searching for
A cloud-coloured blind
Has entered my eyes
And everything's going
A slight shade of purple
But me, I don't mind
Today is my day
I'm living the life that I choose
I've found a way...
I can see a noser
Sit there all alone
And dream I'm sitting here
While magic fires the moon
I turn around my mind
And bid farewell to fear
Swimming through a wish
That I know I'm in a dream
I'm changing the music by ear
I'll have to leave behind
To reensure them in
And wanting oh so clear
Deep insert of time
I catch my breath to find I've got so far to go
Howlin' through the trees
A cry which is my ears
I turn around and go
Following the dream
Is not the easiest thing
Out of the shadows I see
And blackened till the moon
A magic creature moves
And says belongs to me
04 With an Ear to the Ground / You Can Make It / Martinian / Only Cox / Reprise (09:52)
05 Hello Hello (03:45)
Up on a hill top, far from the city
Overlooking a stream
I heard a sound, it made me look round
I looked back where I had just been
There just behind a ledge
There was a man he leapt to and fro
Clipping away at a hedge
Suddenly I heard a ringing singing
But he was nowhere to be seen
Pulling my trousers up to my knees
I waded across the stream
Back to the place where I could hear sounds
And where the old man once had been
There just behind a ledge
I looked about, I couldn't make out
Where he had been clipping the hedge
I could not hear what he was singing
But I found my ears ringing with the sound
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By sylvian1982
What times those must have been! Times of vinyl and cassettes, and even 45s.
A record of this magnitude can bring everyone to agreement... the sense of restraint was not yet optional.
