First of all do we use the definite article or not? The only reason I ask is that several clips from the sixties I've seen have the narrator calling them The Pink Floyd in his best clipped Received English pronunciation. For me the 'The' makes it so much more interesting as a name because it implies:
THE PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN (1967)
First the good news. Unlike many of their contemporaries they do not foster ambitions to be the next Deaf Willie Grimes Who Sold His Soul To Lucifer At The Railway Level Crossing In 1929 and steer well clear of anything that could be remotely described as 'blues'. It's psychedelia all the way here folks.The bad news is that some of this stuff is pretty hard to take. It's experimental and certainly groundbreaking, but sometimes to an extreme extent that would test the patience of a Kate Bush fan. It starts OK though. 'Astronomy Domine' throws in a lot of bleepy, scratchy sound effects, but there's a proper song in there, with some vocals. Syd Barrett does most of the vocals but Rick Wright and Roger Waters chip in occasionally. Gilmour hadn't joined yet. Their two best know early songs and first singles from the period, 'Arnold Layne' and 'See Emily Play' weren't on the original album and you'd have to think that some people drawn in by them might have been a bit put off by the absence of anything nearly as commercial. 'Lucifer Sam' is quite good though, it has a kind of sixties-thriller bassline.Some of the material is a bit twee and away with the fairies (literally in some cases). 'Flaming' is a good example, they seem to use whatever instruments are at hand at the time. It starts getting really weird with 'Pow R. Toc H'. Silly noises backed by a jazz piano and bass drum phase into a general cacophony. You might describe it as an early example of Drum 'N' Bass. If you were being very generous. 'Take Up Thy Stethoscope And Walk' is more of a freakout. You can imagine a girl in a minidress dancing to it with floating bubbles projected over her and the camera zooming in and out very quickly. That kind of thing, y'know?. It's a Waters composition so it's a bit ah....dysfunctional? Similar stuff in the instrumental 'Interstellar Overdrive' except it goes on for over 9 minutes and is pretty disjointed. They're clearly pleasing themselves, but it makes you wonder how they ever found an audience for this. I assume
mind-altering substances played a part. I listened to this through headphones second time around (on account I didn't feel it was right to expose the family to it twice in one day) and although this is a remastered version there was some very dodgy fading going on in both speakers. It may have been intentional and it certainly gave me a slightly weird feeling as I listened to it. Straight from this we go straight back to the twee doggerel of 'The Gnome'. The shades of Bowie's early piece on the same subject looms large. This one is called Grimble Grumble and some of the singing feels like they're trying to achieve the merseyside accent that was so popular at the time due to a contemporary band of whom we've all heard. 'The Scarecrow' starts with some funny percussive noises. It could even be someone clicking their tongue. It's a bit folky but quite satisfying, which is quite something to say about a track on this record. It closes with 'Bike' featuring an appearance of Gerald The Mouse and a clan of Gingerbread men before collapsing into a series of sound effects, the last of which could be Geese? Maybe? I expect you get the picture. The cover is a fly's-eye view of the band.
A SAUCERFUL OF SECRETS (1968)
I'm going to don my tin hat, stick out my neck and raise my head above the parapet and suggest that Syd Barrett wasn't all that. He's still around on this one although not to the extent of PATGOD, but Gilmour has now joined and the album is, in my view, much better than the debut. With the possible exception of 'Corporal Clegg' it is much more subdued and controlled for a start. The bass line at the start of 'Let There Be More Light' was either sampled or heavily influenced The Chemical Brothers 'Block Rockin' Beats'. There's a reference to "Lucy In The Sky" during the mantra-like lyrics, and in this case they probably really do mean LSD. 'Remember A Day' is a bit drippy and airy-fairy. Now 'Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun' could possibly be the best song title ever. It's a great song too. It has an air of menace about it and doesn't really go anywhere (good thing) as whispered lyrics lie over a muted bass and drum melody. Is that a mellotron I hear? 'Corporal Clegg' ploughs a more familiar sixties pop furrow....until the break out the kazoos. Then, Graham Chapman might have said on Monty Python, "This is getting silly! It started out as a perfectly acceptable song about an ex-soldier but you had to ruin it by blowing through a comb and paper". The title track is over 11 minutes of, ahem, 'experimental' material. The opening section is OK. Woozy and fairly gentle, but then we move into something a bit more discordant. Reminded me of parts of Aladdin Sane. It's not the worst example of this kind of thing I've heard. It eventually gives way to the sound of the spaceship's rumbling engines as they hurtle toward the heart of the sun and a ecclesiastic sounding organ. That low level stuff that was played as everyone files into the pews, does a quick prayer and gets ready for their weekly devotions. It's rounded off with 'See-saw' a rather distracted sounding thing where you can hear ghosts of Water's future and 'Jugland Blues'. Which isn't a blues song (a point in their favour). You can hear the temptation to go for another kazoo solo, but they show restraint and just deploy them to support a kind of jumbly brass section. I like the artwork, but I can't for the life of me work out what it is.
MORE ( 1969)
I originally skipped over More, since it is a movie soundtrack, but it is apparently regarded as a studio album proper, so here it is. The writing is Waters-dominated, but I'm not sure you'd spot that unless you'd looked it up on Wiki-cribsheet like I did. The birdsong that so confused me in Ummagumma (see below) is used again at the very beginning here before a pretty gloomy organ piece. This is rather markedly contrasted by 'The Nile Song', where Floyd go a bit metal. Could be Black Sabbath actually. Plenty of fuzzy guitar and reverb on the howling vocal. Quite satisfying really and has the merit of being different. I also rather enjoyed the wistful 'Crying Song', a gentle, lazy folk ballad, but was less keen on the jazz-improv of 'Up The Khyber' which it has just fully dawned on me is a rather unsavoury piece of cockney rhyming slang.The vocal on 'Cymbaline' has that slightly strained, Bowie inflection. Because its a soundtrack album there are some obvious pieces in here which were specifically intended for that purpose, for example 'Main Theme' (bit of a giveaway in the title right?), which is a mismash of bongos, gongs and organs. All good, but not in the least bit commercial. With a title like 'Ibiza Bar' the unwary might be alarmed if expecting some beepy repetitive piece of housey-housey music by Baghwan Pete or whatever those layabouts who play the records for pissed up hen parties from Doncaster call themselves, rather than the Wild Thing/Hendrix hybrid it actually is. Would serve them right if they did. Oh dear oh dear, the only too descriptively named 'More Blues' destroys my faith in the Floyd's eschewment of all things slidey, swampy and incoherent. I can forgive them later for 'Seamus' on 'Meddle' since they may be taking the mickey there (and apparently it is often voted their worst ever song - usually a mark of class in some respect), but I was hoping that PF were more original than the rest. Still, the soundtrack excuse might just let them off. There's a rather odd short piece called 'A Spanish Piece'. Spanish guitar and a spoken part in a faintly racist Spanish/Mexican stereotypical accent. "I'll keell you. I theeenk!". It all finishes off with the meandering 'Dramatic Theme'. The film itself was made in Luxembourg by Iranian director Barbet Schroeder. We're all sick of it cropping up on TV every Christmas.
UMMAGUMMA (1969)
This post has had a difficult birth and I could have done with a fair amount of gas and air to help with the pain relief. It's sort of a double album, with the first record being some live performances of 'Astronomy Domine', 'Careful with That Axe Eugene', 'Set the Controls...'and 'A Saucerful of Secrets'. That's all fine and the screaming in Careful... would certainly curdle most people's blood. But I don't really do live albums, so I won't dwell on it. The rest is well, a bit difficult and lies somewhere between art-terrorism and a BBC sound effects CD.. There's a 4 part suite 'Sysyphus' which starts out doom-laden, before the second movement which is just crashing, tuneless piano, then there's various animal noises before the last movement which starts out quite pastoral before lurching into some fairly tuneless organ noise. 'Grantchester Meadows' starts out with Birdsong, which is confusing when you are out in a green space while listening to it. The song itself is actually quite pleasant, but comes across as a rather earnest nature study. It finishes with a buzzy bee that comes to an abrupt end. The title 'Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In a Cave' should serve as a warning as to what to expect from the next song. Lots of whacky noises to start and then a kind of mad rambling Scotsman, who almost makes sense at times but actually could be construed as quite an insulting stereotype. He prefigures the teacher in The Wall ("If you don't eat yer meat, Ye can't have any pudden!"). The next suite is in 3 parts and is called 'The Narrow Way'. Now this sounds much more like later Floyd, and part 3 would fit quite nicely on A Momentary Lapse Of Reason. Finally another 3 part piece, 'The Grand Vizier's Garden Party'. By now I had lost patience a bit and although I have listened to the album several times, I just wanted it to be over. I doubt I'll ever listen to it again and it amazes me that they got away with releasing this kind of stuff.
ATOM HEART MOTHER (1970)
Here's a salutary lesson in not believing everything you read on Wikipedia. It led me to believe that they hadn't got a thick streak of tuneless pretentiousness out of their system when following up Ummagumma, but this is actually a vast improvement. The format is that there are 5 tracks, the first of which is the 'Atom Heart Mother Suite' cooked up by the band (or 'group' these nuances probably matter). There are 3 shorter songs contributed by Gilmour, Waters and Wright and then the final 'Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast'. 'Atom Heart Mother weighs in at a healthy 24 minutes and took up all of side 1. It's instrumental, if you ignore the choral parts, and generally tuneful. It grew on me a lot after about 4 plays, especially the repeated brass refrain and you can hear the shape of Floyd to come. Waters' 'If' is rather a pleasant little acoustic ditty although the subject matter is naturally a bit bleak.Wright contributes 'Summer Of '68' ("Got my first real Hammond, bought it on the High Street; played it till my ears bled; was the summer of '68" - not really). It has parts which are a little bit Beach Boys-ey. Gilmour's is called 'Fat Old Sun'. and isn't very interesting.The final 'Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast' doesn't start promisingly. Lots of muttering and sound effects. But when it settles into actual music it's fine, rather good in fact. I did enjoy the Snap Crackle and Pop of the Rice Krispies though, and you can almost smell the bacon, eggs and fag smoke. This is probably a good vignette of the band as a whole. Collaborative and individualistic and with merits when travelling either path. I was working hard on a smart play on cooks and broths in advance, but in this case the whole does just about amount to more than the sum of its parts. Album cover? Cow's Arse.
MEDDLE (1971)
The thing about The Pink Floyd and their albums is that you often sit there waiting for about 15 seconds while you try and decide if the album has started yet or you didn't push the button properly. They do like a low rumbling intro. This is another which is short on tracks but higher on quality. The opening 'One Of These Days' sits somewhere between 1977's 'Magic Fly' by Space and, from the same year, 'Fanfare For The Common Man' by ELP. It's unlike anything they've done before and does seem weirdly prescient of future trends. Rather uncannily I was listening to the Fleet Foxes yesterday while taking the kids swimming (I'm the driver, so I get to choose the music and I believe they CAN be educated) and the rather pastoral 'A Pillow Of Winds' has something of the proggy Crosby Stills and Nash sound that the FFs do so well. 'Fearless' sounds like a typical Gilmour/Waters collaboration but rather puzzlingly ends with the Anfield Kop singing 'You'll Never Walk Alone'. Waters' 'San Tropez' is rather more whmisical, you could imagine him performing it with a striped blazer slung over one shoulder. 'Seamus' is a blues ditty to the eponymous dog. Nuff said. Side 2 is taken up with the 23 minutes of 'Echoes' which rather effectively starts with a sonar ping that resolves into a plucked guitar intro. It also features a repeated phrase that Andrew Lloyd Webber may well have nicked for Phantom Of The Opera. Then again, since Floyd are not averse to a bit of litigation, there can't be a strong case or they might have pursued it. (As a side note, I was recently listening to a radio discussion involving Guy Chambers and Tom Robinson following the recent case about 'Blurred Lines' and it seems there are certain criteria around chord progressions etc that go toward a successful plagiarism prosecution). Anyway, it all goes fine until about halfway through, nice bit of jazz-funk exposition, but then stuff like whalesong makes an appearance and ruins the mood. They do pick it up again later on. The cover is apparently an ear underwater (not the Baboon's backside that the designer wanted) but I'm buggered if I can see it.
OBSCURED BY CLOUDS (1972)
So before we enter the run of classic Floyd albums from Dark Side Of The Moon to The Wall, we have this. First thing to note is an overall punchier approach. Nothing over 6 minutes - believe me in the world I'm currently inhabiting that counts as 'punchy'. The opening title track comes across as a kind of Numanoid electronica. All throbbing synths. Then, 'When You're In You're In' has something of 'The Children Of The Revolution' about it - that buzzy, chunky guitar riff. The date is about right for them to be fiddling around with some Glam rock influences.In fact after 4 or 5 tracks this starts to sound like a bit of a pop/rock style sampler. 'The Gold It's In The' is a bit of Southern style boogaloo that ZZ Top wouldn't turn their beards up at.'Wot's... Uh The Deal?' is a nicely crafted concoction of folky harmonies. The opening track on Side 2 is 'Childhood's End', so I naturally wonder of Marillion stole it for it's namesake on Misplaced Childhood. 'Free Four' is approaching pub-rock, although the heftily distorted guitar chops are rather enjoyable. In fact the whole thing is perfectly acceptable. It's based on a movie soundtrack for a French film called called La Vallee, so that might explain some of the variety going on. The closing track, 'Absolutely Curtains' ends with an African chant by the Mapuga tribe. The cover photo is a blurred image of a man in a tree, but don't take my word for it because I would never have guessed without looking it up.
THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON (1973)
Classic albums like this are always a challenge, so before I attempt any critique, let's just run through a few indisputable facts about it.
1. It has been top of the Billboard album charts ever since its release in March 1973
2. Every household in the world owns a copy (except, funnily enough, mine)
3. If you listen to it while watching Star Wars, you can hear a door slam at the exact moment when Han shoots Greedo, and Chewie's final roar in the medal ceremony comes just after the last note fades. This is quite a feat considering that the album running time is just under 43 minutes and the movie is 121 minutes long. You probably need to drop some LSD first to achieve the effect.*
It is also first choice for a lot of people's best album of all time, but fortunately for you I am now here to settle the matter once and for all (but before you run off to the bookie's to place your bet, I reckon that Hunky Dory, Darkness On The Edge Of Town, Hounds Of Love and yes, Wish You Were Here all knock it into a cocked hat for a start).
Of course the album as a whole is much more...Floyd-ey than anything that has come before. Sound effects are used liberally and the tracks themselves are all of a much more palatable length. I think the vocal on 'The Great Gig In The Sky' goes too far at times. But you can't argue with the leisurely electro-funk of 'Money' with it's shimmery repeated wah-wah chord. It's one of those songs that is familiar now, but must have sounded like nothing else at the time. It's much more electronic than you expect too. 'On The Run' and 'Time' could probably have been made 10 years later with no-one batting an eyelid. Although I often chafe against the blues, the laid back version that is achieved on 'Time' is rather satisfying and the echoey production is just right. Clare Torry starts warming up for the Great Gig at least a minute before the previous track ends. Chord progressions and suchlike are very characteristic of the band now, especially in something like 'Us And Them', but maybe TDSOTM is so iconic of Floyd that everything on it defines them and they spent the rest of their career emulating it. We'll see. So is it the greatest album of all time? Not for me, it's good but Floyd themselves did at least 2 better ones. As I've already noted, it's definitive, which is a blessing and a curse.
*Incidentally, if you look closely during the scene where they are in the garbage crusher, you can see parts of a droid that self-destructed after his amorous advances to a Jawa were rejected.
WISH YOU WERE HERE (1975)
I've listened to this almost constantly since finishing the Dark Side Of The Moon post and it is fan-bloody-tastic. I was acquainted in my Sunderland student days with a lovely chap from Oughtibridge in South Yorkshire who was a massive Floyd fan. Dear old Higgy, described anything dirty as 'loppy' and was endearingly forthright in his views. This was 1986-1987 and he shared our rather awful student house. At the time the Pink Floyd legal wars were in full spate and the Higster was firmly in the 'Rodge' faction. Anyway, one evening we had indulged in a few Holsten Pils and the Higatollah insisted that we turned out the lights and put 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond' on. This may have been the closest to an out of body experience that I have ever come. There's no weak point on this for me, from the bell-like four opening guitar notes on 'Shine On..' parts I-V to the heartbreaking sentiment of the title track, this has to be their best album by a country mile (NB I haven't ever listened to some that are still to come so some desperate backtracking may still occur). I dismissed Syd Barrett earlier but if he could inspire much of the material on here then maybe he did have something after all. Famously he turned up during the recording despite being desperately ill, and the songs reflect a sense of loss for friendship, talent and the person they knew. Roy Harper's vocal on 'Have A Cigar' is also inspired, although his delivery isn't much different to Gilmour's or Waters', the fact that he is not a member of the band adds an extra level of meaning to the song, and he does sing it brilliantly. Once again, all those myths about punk washing away the excesses of prog are blown away. This is a much more scathing attack on the biz than the Pistols ever achieved with 'EMI'. Complex packaging too. The image of the burning man shaking hands with another was concealed in black shrink wrap, but there was a sticker showing two robot hands shaking too.
ANIMALS (1977)
Wikipedia insists that the mots-juste when describing Floyd is "English progressive rock group", but really? During this period, which is the one in which they were allegedly being brought down by Lydon et al, they appear to have a much more classical music ethic going on. The albums are arranged into movements around a theme. I know, I know, I'm destroying my own argument here because this is most people's definition of progressive rock but what I mean is that the form they use is quite a conventional one. Anyway, I don't know Animals. It's the pigs over Battersea power station one and Waters' creative grip has really taken hold by now. Influenced by Animal Farm apparently and the range of animals covered is limited (Pigs, Dogs and Sheep), its apparently a commentary on 70s Britain. Waters' problem with this and The Wall, is that he's a grammar school educated multi-millionaire rock star now and so could be open to accusations of being a bit out of touch (in fact his background could make him the Ed Miliband of rock - making Gilmour Cameron? Maybe, as his attitude seems to be "I'm rich and shall live on a houseboat on the Thames, so there") , but fair play to him, he's tackling an issue. I enjoyed the aggressive guitar licks in 'Pigs (Three Different Ones)'. 'Sheep' is all a bit apocalyptic and provides another nail in my not-quite-prog argument by sounding in many places quite a lot like Yes. Rodge's preferred intro ploy is the strummed acoustic guitar, which he uses on both parts of 'Pigs On The Wing' and crops up on The Wall too. I thought Animals was good, but Floyd albums are difficult to come to cold. I need to give it a dew more tries to see it it can get under my skin. Another iconic cover, can you see the floating porker?
THE WALL (1979)
Never mind Rage Against The Machine Vs Simon Cowell for Christmas number one, Floyd managed to get a song about dysfunctional teacher-student relationships to the festive top spot over 30 years earlier, without the help of the internet to boot. In fact, the success of Another Brick Part 2 somewhat detracts from the album as a whole. As a single it is taken completely out of context and most folks who got it to stick in little Billy's Xmas stocking probably viewed it simply as a defiant kids protest against school, a bit like 'School's Out'. Unlike The Dark Side Of The Moon, this album really does snyc with a movie, it's called The Wall, was directed by Alan Parker and a bigger pile of cinematic tosh would be hard to find. Still, who am I to advise you what to watch, you might enjoy seeing Bob Geldof shaving off his eyebrows and lots of badly animated Gerald Scarfe cartoons. I listened to this A LOT as a teenager, the subject matter is angsty enough to satisfy most spotty youths, and I found that I knew all the lyrics (including the numerous spoken recordings scattered throughout). Loving an album is like riding a bike, once you've learnt it, you never forget. However there are some that I have never worked out, and even turning to the sleeve notes (I have this one) isn't very helpful as the scrawled font is almost impossible to read. I have finally discovered that the fifth line of the opening 'In The Flesh' is "That space cadet glow" - I always settled for "Let's face it get go" or something. This is Waters' vision through and through and I do think it's great, up there with Wish You Were Here in the Pink Floyd canon. What's it all about? How tough it is being a rock star and staying sane, and the dangers of the rise of the far right I'd say. There is a much harder edge throughout than their previous albums and it really does add up to a coherent whole (if you allow for a degree of incoherence that comes with any concept album). Of the recorded spoken parts, highlights for me are the sly "Wanna take a baaaath?", "You! You behind the bike sheds! Stand still laddie!" (mind you, our teachers didn't descend on us from helicopters as this one seems to) and the mad howl of "I'VE GOT A LITTLE BLACK BOOK WITH MY POEMS IN!". There's too much to it to dissect it piece by piece, but special mention must go to 'The Trial', which sees Waters going for a full on Gilbert and Sullivan style courtroom set piece complete with cast of characters lining up to stick the knife into our hero Pink. His treatment of his wife and mother, and the way he made them suffer must have been pretty bad if it filled the judge with the urge to defecate. I also really like Another Brick In The Wall Part 3, which is much more nihilistic than the other parts. There's 'Comfortably Numb' of course, which is nothing like the Scissor Sisters cover version (I like that too by the way) and is really rather disturbing. I'll be honest, I've always been slightly disappointed with the artwork. Scarfe's cartoons just seem to be trying a bit too hard.
THE FINAL CUT (1983)
Floyd nut and Waters acolyte Higgy (see Wish You Were Here) really rated this one, so I go into it with my eyes wide open, expecting quite a thorough Rogering. And I'm not disappointed. Pink Floyd have effectively become The Roger Waters Experience. Now that's not to say it's a bad thing. The Wall was tantamount to a Rodge solo album, so, as Amazon says, if you liked that, you might also like this. I did like it actually and so I must reluctantly conclude that I too am a bit of a Waters fan. However, to paraphrase PG Wodehouse, no-one would have difficulty distinguishing between Waters and a ray of sunshine. He has some funny vocal tics, not least his very precise enunciation of the final 't' in words when singing, as if he's really gritting his teeth ("eaT", "BeiruT", "feeT", "cuT"). He's also well politicised by now and weaves the themes of the Second World War and the then recent Falklands War into an anti-war concept album focusing on the sacrifice of the ordinary soldier, often referring directly to his father who died at the Anzio bridgehead. As is usual with Waters-stranglehold-era Floyd, the use of sound-effects and recordings is legion. If you were being unkind you might characterise it as a sort of slightly inferior Wall sequel and the material did allegedly come out of the planned soundtrack for the Wall movie. 'Paranoid Eyes' is a standout for me, there's something rather classic about it. All the players on the early eighties world stage crop up as we go along, Thatch, Reagan, Brezhnev, Menachem Begin and so on. Needless to say Waters hasn't got a lot of time for any of them. 'Not Now John' is rather good too. It's a punchy rock number. Waters did more of this kind of stuff on his next two solo projects, The Pros And Cons of Hitchhiking and Radio KAOS which are also decent offerings. I haven't heard any of his later albums. Something for another day. So after this Roger wanted to take the Pink Floyd ball away and not let Gilmour and Mason play with it. The ensuing legal wrangles are legend and finally culminated in the Gilmour/Mason little-bit-of-Wright incarnation and A Momentary Lapse Of Reason.
A MOMENTARY LAPSE OF REASON (1987)
I'm not sure what my Floydometer Higgy thought of this, but I'm pretty certain he would have viewed it as Not A Proper Floyd Album. Had I posited (as I would) that it is actually quite good I expect he would have curled his lip, raised his chin, given me a piercing stare and told me to stop being a "cabbage". If The Final Cut was essentially a solo Waters effort, then this is Gilmour's response. The problem is that he seems to be trying to create some of the characteristics that Waters made his own. However, this is the one Floyd album I bought on release (I don't have it any more, it went out with most of my old tapes) and I really like it. Gilmour doesn't have Waters anger or need to be political, but he brings a tenderness and humanity to the product especially on songs like "Learning To Fly" and "On The Turning Away". The Pink Floyd vocal, whether delivered by Gilmour or Waters has always been either a low-key growl or a strained howl and it does make you wonder if their relationship was a can't live with, can't live without one. I think 'Dogs Of War' is one where Gilmour is trying too hard and 'A New Machine' jars a bit with the rest of the record, but I will say that, like Wish You Were Here, I had no problem with listening to this over and over again. I like the artwork too. How long did it take to set up all those beds?
THE DIVISION BELL (1994)
After listening to this 2-3 times I was all ready to damn it with faint praise and describe it as competent but not very interesting. However after a couple more times I'm a bit more favourably disposed to it. It's true that there is nothing very groundbreaking here and at times they veer into some very dodgy territory. 'Take It Back' has a sound which is alarmingly close to U2, and nobody wants that. 'Wearing The Inside Out' goes for a bit of smoky sax, but is more than redeemed by Richard Wright's gentle, weary-sounding vocal. 'Keep Talking' includes that Stephen Hawking speech that they used on the BT ads. It was probably quite novel at the time but using Hawking's robotic tones now seems a bit, well, passé (but then this was over 20 years ago now) The closing 'High Hopes' is enjoyable too and mentions 'The Endless River' which will bring this particular odyssey to a close. That album was apparently largely created from the offcuts of this one. The artwork is great I think. The two symmetrical profiles creating a single full-on face which switches in your head like an optical illusion, so that you only see one or the other.
THE ENDLESS RIVER (2014)
Hmm. Well, let's not dwell on this shall we? It's fine, mostly instrumental but I gave them a pass on The Division Bell so I'm afraid I do have to accuse it of being a little bit bland. Only the closing 'Louder Than Words' has any lyrics and it did get some airplay on the album's release. One thing I've discovered/realised about Floyd as I've gone along is that for all the psychedelia and intricate guitar noodling, their words matter too. It is also true I think that they lost their mojo when Waters went and were certainly not as outright political as when he was at the helm. The Stephen Hawking bit turns up again on 'Talkin' Hawkin'', so again, whilst you could let them off 20 years ago, it seems a little trite now. But apparently, this is it. No comebacks. Although Richard Wright is on the album, it was issued posthumously (it's pulled together from material reaching back to The Division Bell). But you never know. My previous subjects, The Who, just don't know when to stop, and they did get together with Rodge for Live 8. If Gilmour's houseboat succumbs to the rising tide when the Thames Barrier finally gives in he may need the cash that a reunion tour would provide. Artwork? Also dull. But pretty enough.
- There is such a thing as a 'Floyd'
- They come in a variety of colours.
- Only one of them is Pink.
THE PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN (1967)First the good news. Unlike many of their contemporaries they do not foster ambitions to be the next Deaf Willie Grimes Who Sold His Soul To Lucifer At The Railway Level Crossing In 1929 and steer well clear of anything that could be remotely described as 'blues'. It's psychedelia all the way here folks.The bad news is that some of this stuff is pretty hard to take. It's experimental and certainly groundbreaking, but sometimes to an extreme extent that would test the patience of a Kate Bush fan. It starts OK though. 'Astronomy Domine' throws in a lot of bleepy, scratchy sound effects, but there's a proper song in there, with some vocals. Syd Barrett does most of the vocals but Rick Wright and Roger Waters chip in occasionally. Gilmour hadn't joined yet. Their two best know early songs and first singles from the period, 'Arnold Layne' and 'See Emily Play' weren't on the original album and you'd have to think that some people drawn in by them might have been a bit put off by the absence of anything nearly as commercial. 'Lucifer Sam' is quite good though, it has a kind of sixties-thriller bassline.Some of the material is a bit twee and away with the fairies (literally in some cases). 'Flaming' is a good example, they seem to use whatever instruments are at hand at the time. It starts getting really weird with 'Pow R. Toc H'. Silly noises backed by a jazz piano and bass drum phase into a general cacophony. You might describe it as an early example of Drum 'N' Bass. If you were being very generous. 'Take Up Thy Stethoscope And Walk' is more of a freakout. You can imagine a girl in a minidress dancing to it with floating bubbles projected over her and the camera zooming in and out very quickly. That kind of thing, y'know?. It's a Waters composition so it's a bit ah....dysfunctional? Similar stuff in the instrumental 'Interstellar Overdrive' except it goes on for over 9 minutes and is pretty disjointed. They're clearly pleasing themselves, but it makes you wonder how they ever found an audience for this. I assume
mind-altering substances played a part. I listened to this through headphones second time around (on account I didn't feel it was right to expose the family to it twice in one day) and although this is a remastered version there was some very dodgy fading going on in both speakers. It may have been intentional and it certainly gave me a slightly weird feeling as I listened to it. Straight from this we go straight back to the twee doggerel of 'The Gnome'. The shades of Bowie's early piece on the same subject looms large. This one is called Grimble Grumble and some of the singing feels like they're trying to achieve the merseyside accent that was so popular at the time due to a contemporary band of whom we've all heard. 'The Scarecrow' starts with some funny percussive noises. It could even be someone clicking their tongue. It's a bit folky but quite satisfying, which is quite something to say about a track on this record. It closes with 'Bike' featuring an appearance of Gerald The Mouse and a clan of Gingerbread men before collapsing into a series of sound effects, the last of which could be Geese? Maybe? I expect you get the picture. The cover is a fly's-eye view of the band.
I'm going to don my tin hat, stick out my neck and raise my head above the parapet and suggest that Syd Barrett wasn't all that. He's still around on this one although not to the extent of PATGOD, but Gilmour has now joined and the album is, in my view, much better than the debut. With the possible exception of 'Corporal Clegg' it is much more subdued and controlled for a start. The bass line at the start of 'Let There Be More Light' was either sampled or heavily influenced The Chemical Brothers 'Block Rockin' Beats'. There's a reference to "Lucy In The Sky" during the mantra-like lyrics, and in this case they probably really do mean LSD. 'Remember A Day' is a bit drippy and airy-fairy. Now 'Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun' could possibly be the best song title ever. It's a great song too. It has an air of menace about it and doesn't really go anywhere (good thing) as whispered lyrics lie over a muted bass and drum melody. Is that a mellotron I hear? 'Corporal Clegg' ploughs a more familiar sixties pop furrow....until the break out the kazoos. Then, Graham Chapman might have said on Monty Python, "This is getting silly! It started out as a perfectly acceptable song about an ex-soldier but you had to ruin it by blowing through a comb and paper". The title track is over 11 minutes of, ahem, 'experimental' material. The opening section is OK. Woozy and fairly gentle, but then we move into something a bit more discordant. Reminded me of parts of Aladdin Sane. It's not the worst example of this kind of thing I've heard. It eventually gives way to the sound of the spaceship's rumbling engines as they hurtle toward the heart of the sun and a ecclesiastic sounding organ. That low level stuff that was played as everyone files into the pews, does a quick prayer and gets ready for their weekly devotions. It's rounded off with 'See-saw' a rather distracted sounding thing where you can hear ghosts of Water's future and 'Jugland Blues'. Which isn't a blues song (a point in their favour). You can hear the temptation to go for another kazoo solo, but they show restraint and just deploy them to support a kind of jumbly brass section. I like the artwork, but I can't for the life of me work out what it is.
I originally skipped over More, since it is a movie soundtrack, but it is apparently regarded as a studio album proper, so here it is. The writing is Waters-dominated, but I'm not sure you'd spot that unless you'd looked it up on Wiki-cribsheet like I did. The birdsong that so confused me in Ummagumma (see below) is used again at the very beginning here before a pretty gloomy organ piece. This is rather markedly contrasted by 'The Nile Song', where Floyd go a bit metal. Could be Black Sabbath actually. Plenty of fuzzy guitar and reverb on the howling vocal. Quite satisfying really and has the merit of being different. I also rather enjoyed the wistful 'Crying Song', a gentle, lazy folk ballad, but was less keen on the jazz-improv of 'Up The Khyber' which it has just fully dawned on me is a rather unsavoury piece of cockney rhyming slang.The vocal on 'Cymbaline' has that slightly strained, Bowie inflection. Because its a soundtrack album there are some obvious pieces in here which were specifically intended for that purpose, for example 'Main Theme' (bit of a giveaway in the title right?), which is a mismash of bongos, gongs and organs. All good, but not in the least bit commercial. With a title like 'Ibiza Bar' the unwary might be alarmed if expecting some beepy repetitive piece of housey-housey music by Baghwan Pete or whatever those layabouts who play the records for pissed up hen parties from Doncaster call themselves, rather than the Wild Thing/Hendrix hybrid it actually is. Would serve them right if they did. Oh dear oh dear, the only too descriptively named 'More Blues' destroys my faith in the Floyd's eschewment of all things slidey, swampy and incoherent. I can forgive them later for 'Seamus' on 'Meddle' since they may be taking the mickey there (and apparently it is often voted their worst ever song - usually a mark of class in some respect), but I was hoping that PF were more original than the rest. Still, the soundtrack excuse might just let them off. There's a rather odd short piece called 'A Spanish Piece'. Spanish guitar and a spoken part in a faintly racist Spanish/Mexican stereotypical accent. "I'll keell you. I theeenk!". It all finishes off with the meandering 'Dramatic Theme'. The film itself was made in Luxembourg by Iranian director Barbet Schroeder. We're all sick of it cropping up on TV every Christmas.
UMMAGUMMA (1969)This post has had a difficult birth and I could have done with a fair amount of gas and air to help with the pain relief. It's sort of a double album, with the first record being some live performances of 'Astronomy Domine', 'Careful with That Axe Eugene', 'Set the Controls...'and 'A Saucerful of Secrets'. That's all fine and the screaming in Careful... would certainly curdle most people's blood. But I don't really do live albums, so I won't dwell on it. The rest is well, a bit difficult and lies somewhere between art-terrorism and a BBC sound effects CD.. There's a 4 part suite 'Sysyphus' which starts out doom-laden, before the second movement which is just crashing, tuneless piano, then there's various animal noises before the last movement which starts out quite pastoral before lurching into some fairly tuneless organ noise. 'Grantchester Meadows' starts out with Birdsong, which is confusing when you are out in a green space while listening to it. The song itself is actually quite pleasant, but comes across as a rather earnest nature study. It finishes with a buzzy bee that comes to an abrupt end. The title 'Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In a Cave' should serve as a warning as to what to expect from the next song. Lots of whacky noises to start and then a kind of mad rambling Scotsman, who almost makes sense at times but actually could be construed as quite an insulting stereotype. He prefigures the teacher in The Wall ("If you don't eat yer meat, Ye can't have any pudden!"). The next suite is in 3 parts and is called 'The Narrow Way'. Now this sounds much more like later Floyd, and part 3 would fit quite nicely on A Momentary Lapse Of Reason. Finally another 3 part piece, 'The Grand Vizier's Garden Party'. By now I had lost patience a bit and although I have listened to the album several times, I just wanted it to be over. I doubt I'll ever listen to it again and it amazes me that they got away with releasing this kind of stuff.
ATOM HEART MOTHER (1970)Here's a salutary lesson in not believing everything you read on Wikipedia. It led me to believe that they hadn't got a thick streak of tuneless pretentiousness out of their system when following up Ummagumma, but this is actually a vast improvement. The format is that there are 5 tracks, the first of which is the 'Atom Heart Mother Suite' cooked up by the band (or 'group' these nuances probably matter). There are 3 shorter songs contributed by Gilmour, Waters and Wright and then the final 'Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast'. 'Atom Heart Mother weighs in at a healthy 24 minutes and took up all of side 1. It's instrumental, if you ignore the choral parts, and generally tuneful. It grew on me a lot after about 4 plays, especially the repeated brass refrain and you can hear the shape of Floyd to come. Waters' 'If' is rather a pleasant little acoustic ditty although the subject matter is naturally a bit bleak.Wright contributes 'Summer Of '68' ("Got my first real Hammond, bought it on the High Street; played it till my ears bled; was the summer of '68" - not really). It has parts which are a little bit Beach Boys-ey. Gilmour's is called 'Fat Old Sun'. and isn't very interesting.The final 'Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast' doesn't start promisingly. Lots of muttering and sound effects. But when it settles into actual music it's fine, rather good in fact. I did enjoy the Snap Crackle and Pop of the Rice Krispies though, and you can almost smell the bacon, eggs and fag smoke. This is probably a good vignette of the band as a whole. Collaborative and individualistic and with merits when travelling either path. I was working hard on a smart play on cooks and broths in advance, but in this case the whole does just about amount to more than the sum of its parts. Album cover? Cow's Arse.
The thing about The Pink Floyd and their albums is that you often sit there waiting for about 15 seconds while you try and decide if the album has started yet or you didn't push the button properly. They do like a low rumbling intro. This is another which is short on tracks but higher on quality. The opening 'One Of These Days' sits somewhere between 1977's 'Magic Fly' by Space and, from the same year, 'Fanfare For The Common Man' by ELP. It's unlike anything they've done before and does seem weirdly prescient of future trends. Rather uncannily I was listening to the Fleet Foxes yesterday while taking the kids swimming (I'm the driver, so I get to choose the music and I believe they CAN be educated) and the rather pastoral 'A Pillow Of Winds' has something of the proggy Crosby Stills and Nash sound that the FFs do so well. 'Fearless' sounds like a typical Gilmour/Waters collaboration but rather puzzlingly ends with the Anfield Kop singing 'You'll Never Walk Alone'. Waters' 'San Tropez' is rather more whmisical, you could imagine him performing it with a striped blazer slung over one shoulder. 'Seamus' is a blues ditty to the eponymous dog. Nuff said. Side 2 is taken up with the 23 minutes of 'Echoes' which rather effectively starts with a sonar ping that resolves into a plucked guitar intro. It also features a repeated phrase that Andrew Lloyd Webber may well have nicked for Phantom Of The Opera. Then again, since Floyd are not averse to a bit of litigation, there can't be a strong case or they might have pursued it. (As a side note, I was recently listening to a radio discussion involving Guy Chambers and Tom Robinson following the recent case about 'Blurred Lines' and it seems there are certain criteria around chord progressions etc that go toward a successful plagiarism prosecution). Anyway, it all goes fine until about halfway through, nice bit of jazz-funk exposition, but then stuff like whalesong makes an appearance and ruins the mood. They do pick it up again later on. The cover is apparently an ear underwater (not the Baboon's backside that the designer wanted) but I'm buggered if I can see it.
So before we enter the run of classic Floyd albums from Dark Side Of The Moon to The Wall, we have this. First thing to note is an overall punchier approach. Nothing over 6 minutes - believe me in the world I'm currently inhabiting that counts as 'punchy'. The opening title track comes across as a kind of Numanoid electronica. All throbbing synths. Then, 'When You're In You're In' has something of 'The Children Of The Revolution' about it - that buzzy, chunky guitar riff. The date is about right for them to be fiddling around with some Glam rock influences.In fact after 4 or 5 tracks this starts to sound like a bit of a pop/rock style sampler. 'The Gold It's In The' is a bit of Southern style boogaloo that ZZ Top wouldn't turn their beards up at.'Wot's... Uh The Deal?' is a nicely crafted concoction of folky harmonies. The opening track on Side 2 is 'Childhood's End', so I naturally wonder of Marillion stole it for it's namesake on Misplaced Childhood. 'Free Four' is approaching pub-rock, although the heftily distorted guitar chops are rather enjoyable. In fact the whole thing is perfectly acceptable. It's based on a movie soundtrack for a French film called called La Vallee, so that might explain some of the variety going on. The closing track, 'Absolutely Curtains' ends with an African chant by the Mapuga tribe. The cover photo is a blurred image of a man in a tree, but don't take my word for it because I would never have guessed without looking it up.
Classic albums like this are always a challenge, so before I attempt any critique, let's just run through a few indisputable facts about it.
1. It has been top of the Billboard album charts ever since its release in March 1973
2. Every household in the world owns a copy (except, funnily enough, mine)
3. If you listen to it while watching Star Wars, you can hear a door slam at the exact moment when Han shoots Greedo, and Chewie's final roar in the medal ceremony comes just after the last note fades. This is quite a feat considering that the album running time is just under 43 minutes and the movie is 121 minutes long. You probably need to drop some LSD first to achieve the effect.*
It is also first choice for a lot of people's best album of all time, but fortunately for you I am now here to settle the matter once and for all (but before you run off to the bookie's to place your bet, I reckon that Hunky Dory, Darkness On The Edge Of Town, Hounds Of Love and yes, Wish You Were Here all knock it into a cocked hat for a start).
Of course the album as a whole is much more...Floyd-ey than anything that has come before. Sound effects are used liberally and the tracks themselves are all of a much more palatable length. I think the vocal on 'The Great Gig In The Sky' goes too far at times. But you can't argue with the leisurely electro-funk of 'Money' with it's shimmery repeated wah-wah chord. It's one of those songs that is familiar now, but must have sounded like nothing else at the time. It's much more electronic than you expect too. 'On The Run' and 'Time' could probably have been made 10 years later with no-one batting an eyelid. Although I often chafe against the blues, the laid back version that is achieved on 'Time' is rather satisfying and the echoey production is just right. Clare Torry starts warming up for the Great Gig at least a minute before the previous track ends. Chord progressions and suchlike are very characteristic of the band now, especially in something like 'Us And Them', but maybe TDSOTM is so iconic of Floyd that everything on it defines them and they spent the rest of their career emulating it. We'll see. So is it the greatest album of all time? Not for me, it's good but Floyd themselves did at least 2 better ones. As I've already noted, it's definitive, which is a blessing and a curse.
*Incidentally, if you look closely during the scene where they are in the garbage crusher, you can see parts of a droid that self-destructed after his amorous advances to a Jawa were rejected.
WISH YOU WERE HERE (1975)
I've listened to this almost constantly since finishing the Dark Side Of The Moon post and it is fan-bloody-tastic. I was acquainted in my Sunderland student days with a lovely chap from Oughtibridge in South Yorkshire who was a massive Floyd fan. Dear old Higgy, described anything dirty as 'loppy' and was endearingly forthright in his views. This was 1986-1987 and he shared our rather awful student house. At the time the Pink Floyd legal wars were in full spate and the Higster was firmly in the 'Rodge' faction. Anyway, one evening we had indulged in a few Holsten Pils and the Higatollah insisted that we turned out the lights and put 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond' on. This may have been the closest to an out of body experience that I have ever come. There's no weak point on this for me, from the bell-like four opening guitar notes on 'Shine On..' parts I-V to the heartbreaking sentiment of the title track, this has to be their best album by a country mile (NB I haven't ever listened to some that are still to come so some desperate backtracking may still occur). I dismissed Syd Barrett earlier but if he could inspire much of the material on here then maybe he did have something after all. Famously he turned up during the recording despite being desperately ill, and the songs reflect a sense of loss for friendship, talent and the person they knew. Roy Harper's vocal on 'Have A Cigar' is also inspired, although his delivery isn't much different to Gilmour's or Waters', the fact that he is not a member of the band adds an extra level of meaning to the song, and he does sing it brilliantly. Once again, all those myths about punk washing away the excesses of prog are blown away. This is a much more scathing attack on the biz than the Pistols ever achieved with 'EMI'. Complex packaging too. The image of the burning man shaking hands with another was concealed in black shrink wrap, but there was a sticker showing two robot hands shaking too.
Wikipedia insists that the mots-juste when describing Floyd is "English progressive rock group", but really? During this period, which is the one in which they were allegedly being brought down by Lydon et al, they appear to have a much more classical music ethic going on. The albums are arranged into movements around a theme. I know, I know, I'm destroying my own argument here because this is most people's definition of progressive rock but what I mean is that the form they use is quite a conventional one. Anyway, I don't know Animals. It's the pigs over Battersea power station one and Waters' creative grip has really taken hold by now. Influenced by Animal Farm apparently and the range of animals covered is limited (Pigs, Dogs and Sheep), its apparently a commentary on 70s Britain. Waters' problem with this and The Wall, is that he's a grammar school educated multi-millionaire rock star now and so could be open to accusations of being a bit out of touch (in fact his background could make him the Ed Miliband of rock - making Gilmour Cameron? Maybe, as his attitude seems to be "I'm rich and shall live on a houseboat on the Thames, so there") , but fair play to him, he's tackling an issue. I enjoyed the aggressive guitar licks in 'Pigs (Three Different Ones)'. 'Sheep' is all a bit apocalyptic and provides another nail in my not-quite-prog argument by sounding in many places quite a lot like Yes. Rodge's preferred intro ploy is the strummed acoustic guitar, which he uses on both parts of 'Pigs On The Wing' and crops up on The Wall too. I thought Animals was good, but Floyd albums are difficult to come to cold. I need to give it a dew more tries to see it it can get under my skin. Another iconic cover, can you see the floating porker?
Never mind Rage Against The Machine Vs Simon Cowell for Christmas number one, Floyd managed to get a song about dysfunctional teacher-student relationships to the festive top spot over 30 years earlier, without the help of the internet to boot. In fact, the success of Another Brick Part 2 somewhat detracts from the album as a whole. As a single it is taken completely out of context and most folks who got it to stick in little Billy's Xmas stocking probably viewed it simply as a defiant kids protest against school, a bit like 'School's Out'. Unlike The Dark Side Of The Moon, this album really does snyc with a movie, it's called The Wall, was directed by Alan Parker and a bigger pile of cinematic tosh would be hard to find. Still, who am I to advise you what to watch, you might enjoy seeing Bob Geldof shaving off his eyebrows and lots of badly animated Gerald Scarfe cartoons. I listened to this A LOT as a teenager, the subject matter is angsty enough to satisfy most spotty youths, and I found that I knew all the lyrics (including the numerous spoken recordings scattered throughout). Loving an album is like riding a bike, once you've learnt it, you never forget. However there are some that I have never worked out, and even turning to the sleeve notes (I have this one) isn't very helpful as the scrawled font is almost impossible to read. I have finally discovered that the fifth line of the opening 'In The Flesh' is "That space cadet glow" - I always settled for "Let's face it get go" or something. This is Waters' vision through and through and I do think it's great, up there with Wish You Were Here in the Pink Floyd canon. What's it all about? How tough it is being a rock star and staying sane, and the dangers of the rise of the far right I'd say. There is a much harder edge throughout than their previous albums and it really does add up to a coherent whole (if you allow for a degree of incoherence that comes with any concept album). Of the recorded spoken parts, highlights for me are the sly "Wanna take a baaaath?", "You! You behind the bike sheds! Stand still laddie!" (mind you, our teachers didn't descend on us from helicopters as this one seems to) and the mad howl of "I'VE GOT A LITTLE BLACK BOOK WITH MY POEMS IN!". There's too much to it to dissect it piece by piece, but special mention must go to 'The Trial', which sees Waters going for a full on Gilbert and Sullivan style courtroom set piece complete with cast of characters lining up to stick the knife into our hero Pink. His treatment of his wife and mother, and the way he made them suffer must have been pretty bad if it filled the judge with the urge to defecate. I also really like Another Brick In The Wall Part 3, which is much more nihilistic than the other parts. There's 'Comfortably Numb' of course, which is nothing like the Scissor Sisters cover version (I like that too by the way) and is really rather disturbing. I'll be honest, I've always been slightly disappointed with the artwork. Scarfe's cartoons just seem to be trying a bit too hard.
Floyd nut and Waters acolyte Higgy (see Wish You Were Here) really rated this one, so I go into it with my eyes wide open, expecting quite a thorough Rogering. And I'm not disappointed. Pink Floyd have effectively become The Roger Waters Experience. Now that's not to say it's a bad thing. The Wall was tantamount to a Rodge solo album, so, as Amazon says, if you liked that, you might also like this. I did like it actually and so I must reluctantly conclude that I too am a bit of a Waters fan. However, to paraphrase PG Wodehouse, no-one would have difficulty distinguishing between Waters and a ray of sunshine. He has some funny vocal tics, not least his very precise enunciation of the final 't' in words when singing, as if he's really gritting his teeth ("eaT", "BeiruT", "feeT", "cuT"). He's also well politicised by now and weaves the themes of the Second World War and the then recent Falklands War into an anti-war concept album focusing on the sacrifice of the ordinary soldier, often referring directly to his father who died at the Anzio bridgehead. As is usual with Waters-stranglehold-era Floyd, the use of sound-effects and recordings is legion. If you were being unkind you might characterise it as a sort of slightly inferior Wall sequel and the material did allegedly come out of the planned soundtrack for the Wall movie. 'Paranoid Eyes' is a standout for me, there's something rather classic about it. All the players on the early eighties world stage crop up as we go along, Thatch, Reagan, Brezhnev, Menachem Begin and so on. Needless to say Waters hasn't got a lot of time for any of them. 'Not Now John' is rather good too. It's a punchy rock number. Waters did more of this kind of stuff on his next two solo projects, The Pros And Cons of Hitchhiking and Radio KAOS which are also decent offerings. I haven't heard any of his later albums. Something for another day. So after this Roger wanted to take the Pink Floyd ball away and not let Gilmour and Mason play with it. The ensuing legal wrangles are legend and finally culminated in the Gilmour/Mason little-bit-of-Wright incarnation and A Momentary Lapse Of Reason.
I'm not sure what my Floydometer Higgy thought of this, but I'm pretty certain he would have viewed it as Not A Proper Floyd Album. Had I posited (as I would) that it is actually quite good I expect he would have curled his lip, raised his chin, given me a piercing stare and told me to stop being a "cabbage". If The Final Cut was essentially a solo Waters effort, then this is Gilmour's response. The problem is that he seems to be trying to create some of the characteristics that Waters made his own. However, this is the one Floyd album I bought on release (I don't have it any more, it went out with most of my old tapes) and I really like it. Gilmour doesn't have Waters anger or need to be political, but he brings a tenderness and humanity to the product especially on songs like "Learning To Fly" and "On The Turning Away". The Pink Floyd vocal, whether delivered by Gilmour or Waters has always been either a low-key growl or a strained howl and it does make you wonder if their relationship was a can't live with, can't live without one. I think 'Dogs Of War' is one where Gilmour is trying too hard and 'A New Machine' jars a bit with the rest of the record, but I will say that, like Wish You Were Here, I had no problem with listening to this over and over again. I like the artwork too. How long did it take to set up all those beds?
After listening to this 2-3 times I was all ready to damn it with faint praise and describe it as competent but not very interesting. However after a couple more times I'm a bit more favourably disposed to it. It's true that there is nothing very groundbreaking here and at times they veer into some very dodgy territory. 'Take It Back' has a sound which is alarmingly close to U2, and nobody wants that. 'Wearing The Inside Out' goes for a bit of smoky sax, but is more than redeemed by Richard Wright's gentle, weary-sounding vocal. 'Keep Talking' includes that Stephen Hawking speech that they used on the BT ads. It was probably quite novel at the time but using Hawking's robotic tones now seems a bit, well, passé (but then this was over 20 years ago now) The closing 'High Hopes' is enjoyable too and mentions 'The Endless River' which will bring this particular odyssey to a close. That album was apparently largely created from the offcuts of this one. The artwork is great I think. The two symmetrical profiles creating a single full-on face which switches in your head like an optical illusion, so that you only see one or the other.
Hmm. Well, let's not dwell on this shall we? It's fine, mostly instrumental but I gave them a pass on The Division Bell so I'm afraid I do have to accuse it of being a little bit bland. Only the closing 'Louder Than Words' has any lyrics and it did get some airplay on the album's release. One thing I've discovered/realised about Floyd as I've gone along is that for all the psychedelia and intricate guitar noodling, their words matter too. It is also true I think that they lost their mojo when Waters went and were certainly not as outright political as when he was at the helm. The Stephen Hawking bit turns up again on 'Talkin' Hawkin'', so again, whilst you could let them off 20 years ago, it seems a little trite now. But apparently, this is it. No comebacks. Although Richard Wright is on the album, it was issued posthumously (it's pulled together from material reaching back to The Division Bell). But you never know. My previous subjects, The Who, just don't know when to stop, and they did get together with Rodge for Live 8. If Gilmour's houseboat succumbs to the rising tide when the Thames Barrier finally gives in he may need the cash that a reunion tour would provide. Artwork? Also dull. But pretty enough.
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