The Australian Pink Floyd Set the Controls Tour

The Australian Pink Floyd Show

Tour: Set The Controls

Date: February 18, 2014

Location: G Live

Support: n/a

Last year, in honour of the 40^th anniversary of Dark Side of the Moon, the world’s best tribute band The Australian Pink Floyd Show performed the album in full and it was quite spectacular. Of course, this year they’re not doing any such thing. Although they are playing a significant number of songs from Dark Side, they’re not in order, which is all wrong. Also, since the first time, I’ve seen Roger waters (that’s 20% of the real Pink Floyd) so seeing these guys again could never match up, right?

Well, the big surprise of the night was that they were actually even better than before. Without constraining themselves to one particular album, they were able to play a bigger variety of songs from more period of the band’s career, and there weren’t as many repeats from the first time as I’d worried. And there was an additional element where the audience could vote, a couple of months prior to the show, for songs they wanted played (from a selection) which I thought was a really great idea that more bands should try.

In fact, they opened with one of the songs I’d voted for: ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’, the song Pink Floyd used to open their concerts with years ago. The song is basically made for that purpose, beginning so quietly and building to a crescendo as the title line is sung, and assuming that was my only chance to see it played live, it was good enough that I can handle that. Later on, both ‘Welcome To The Machine’ and ‘Wish You Were Here’ were played from the same album, the latter being a repeat but a highly enjoyable one, although the video of the members of the real Pink Floyd that was played in the background was recycled exactly. Plus, this time around the opening guitar part didn’t get fumbled.

Other repeats came from Dark Side of the Moon, including my two favourites ‘Time’ and ‘Us & Them’, and the surprising choice of ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’, which is very difficult to pull off but I was impressed with the performances of the backing singers. (One of them used to be a backing singer for Floyd when they toured in the 90s, which has to help.)

But the best songs of the night were the more unexpected ones. The undisputed highlight was ‘Set The Controls for the Heart of the Sun’, an all time favourite of mine in the studio but one that doesn’t always work live, since it’s harder to get the creepy, atmospheric feel of the song – but here they stayed true to the studio version rather than any of the published live ones, and the overall effect was great. That and the music played over the PA before the concert began (clips of songs from ‘Piper’) were the closest we got to Syd Barrett numbers all night, the one major disappointment and flaw in the concert for the second year running.

I was also lucky enough to hear a song from Animals – it wasn’t ‘Sheep’, as I’d been hoping, but it was the funky, danceable ‘Pigs (Three Different Ones)’, played in full. Coming at the beginning of the second set, the band’s rocking out came as a nice contrast to the quiet concentration they’d been in for most of the first half. We saw this again in some of the heavier Wall cuts, like ‘Young Lust’, and a version of ‘Happiest Days/Brick 2’ that didn’t live up to Waters’ own venomous voice but was nevertheless enjoyable.

This was less of a surprise as I knew it was coming, but it was also good to hear three songs from ‘The Division Bell’ – the post-Waters era gets a lot of hate, but I really like the bluesy call-and-response ‘Keep Talking’, although I was less convinced by the guitar-solo-heavy ‘Coming Back to Life’. I feel like the group should stick to the full band compositions rather than trying to play songs that specifically relate to one particular member, where the style is harder to imitate.

I’ve already mentioned that the Wall songs had the hardest challenge, and none more so than ‘Comfortably Numb’, which has been performed wonderfully so many times that it can’t possibly be beaten. The band played a note-for-note copy of the original, and the guitar solo felt elegant and natural, although the vocals possibly could have been improved.

I managed to find myself a place to stand right near the front, and so the atmosphere in the audience was great, with other people who were clearly huge fans too. After the band left the stage following ‘Comfortably Numb’, everyone was cheering for ‘Run Like Hell’, except for a select few near me who decided to yell for ‘Brain Damage’. I considered shouting out ‘Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast!’ but then worried they would actually play it, which would be a waste of an encore. Not to worry, though. They finished the night with a rousingly energetic ‘Run Like Hell’ that was so intense I managed to forget that Roger’s emotion wasn’t quite there.

Overall, a tribute band to one of the world’s most famous bands is always going to have a difficult task, but there’s a reason the Australian Pink Floyd have such a great reputation. Their love and respect for the music, the most important feature a tribute band can have, is obvious, and they have genuine talent of their own too, as well as a great sense of humour about the whole thing. With that in mind, I’ll end with an anecdote I heard once that I’m 98% sure is not true.

David Gilmour went to see the Australian Pink Floyd years ago and was so impressed that he said they were the best tribute band he’d ever seen. Flattered and wanting to return the compliment, a member of the Aussie Floyd found some tapes of the original Floyd playing, and told them that they were the best Australian Pink Floyd tribute band he’d ever seen.

Pink Floyd: A Momentary Lapse of Reason

A Momentary Lapse of Reason

Best song: Sorrow

Worst song: The Dogs of War

Overall grade: 4

[author’s note: finally reached 100 reviews! Much later than I hoped, but I made it.]

I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while. More often than not, I find that people tend to dismiss this album, and I completely understand why. After Roger Waters had left the band, having almost singlehandedly written the past three albums, people must have been justifiably sceptical about David Gilmour’s ability to keep the band going at such a high level. Add to that the ‘80s curse’ that had set in, bestowing mediocrity and commercialism on once-great bands, and by all rights this album has all the makings of something absolutely terrible. But truth is, I find quite a few of the songs here to be excellent.

David Gilmour did not try to be Roger Waters here. When he decided to make a Pink Floyd album instead of a solo album, he writes Gilmour songs with a few Pink Floyd trademarks thrown in. He didn’t go for concept albums and long epics and darkly abstract lyrics, because he knew his strengths didn’t lie in those areas. Instead, he brought in writing partners where it was necessary and wrote relatable classic pop melodies with interesting twists and occasionally the barest hint of experimentalism.

Some people take issue with this album because it’s almost a Gilmour solo album, which is true. Some people take issue because Gilmour wasn’t an original band member, as he replaced Syd Barrett – also true. But as for the idea that it was too different to their previous work? Well, just look at the difference between ‘The Piper at the Gates of Dawn’ and ‘Animals’. Their two best albums in my opinion, but they couldn’t be more different. Change isn’t always bad, it seems.

The very beginning of the album isn’t so great – ‘Signs Of Life’ is actually very enjoyable when you don’t know Pink Floyd very well, but leaves a bitter taste when you realise quite how much of it is recycled from Floyd songs of past. Similarly, ‘The Dogs of War’ re-uses sound effects, including the barking from ‘Dogs’ and the alarm clocks from ‘Time’. Here, Gilmour tries too hard to be aggressive and dissonant. He doesn’t manage to shock or unnerve his fans, just make them grimace as they reach for the ‘Skip’ button.

The best known song from the album is probably ‘Learning to Fly’, which shows Gilmour and company on top melodic form, coming up with all kinds of irritatingly rhythmic hooks and using Gilmour’s recent foray into owning aeroplanes as a metaphor for moving on from the Waters-led band. Some might say that the new band shouldn’t have focused their new songs on this, but I would say that writing about what’s relevant to them will always make a better song. Plus, the songs would have been accused of being about Waters no matter what. Anyway, it’s an arena rock song with a Pink Floyd twist, and the combination shines.

‘One Slip’ follows a similar formula yet manages to be different at the same time. The opening sounds like the beginning to a vintage video game. Phil Manzanera co-writes, bringing a freshness and a hint of 80s Roxy Music to the songwriting, and while lyrics were never one of Gilmour’s strong points, they’re actually pretty good and very honest here, talking about a failed marriage. Lots of percussion and some spacey instrumental sections stop the song from feeling too generic.

Then comes the beautiful and dreamy ballad ‘On The Turning Away’, which in some ways foreshadows Gilmour’s ‘On An Island’ work. His voice is so light that a sudden wind might sweep it away, and it’s a song that shows so much quiet emotion before letting it all flood out in the guitar solo that dominates the second half.

Following these triumphs, ‘Yet Another Movie’ is an unassuming disappointment. It seems like it’s trying to be interesting, maybe even like it should be interesting, but it doesn’t capture my attention anywhere near long enough for its length, the different parts seem to clash with each other somehow, and the solo here is either squealy or boring. Far more exciting is the impossibly short instrumental that it leads right into, ‘Round And Around’, which is minimal, atmospheric and surprisingly intense, and could have led onto something really awesome.

Another instrumental success is ‘Terminal Frost’. Anything that comes between the two dated, barely musical parts of ‘A New Machine’ is sure to be a success in comparison, but ‘Frost’ particularly so. Here, Pink Floyd experiment with jazzy undertones and the wide range of guest musicians on the song make the musicianship of a much higher quality than on the band’s earlier output. Its structure is excellent, often hinting at becoming something huge and fading back down again before really exploding towards the end.

And the true masterpiece is left for last. I was lucky enough to see the Australian Pink Floyd Show play ‘Sorrow’ live on their most recent tour, and whether live or in the studio, it absolutely stands up to the band’s 70s output. It’s dark, heavy and melodic all at the same time and always manages to make a big impression on me. Some great guitar and bass work (Tony Levin contributes) and incredible, intense momentum make this into a thrilling epic that by itself almost elevates the album to a 5-level. I’ve heard people call it filler, but I can’t see how anyone could not enjoy its wonderful progression and diversity, along with the excellent, involved performances from everyone, creating a memorable finish.

Albums like Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall are justifiably massive because they have the ability to blow peoples’ minds and even change their lives. A Momentary Lapse of Reason is never going to do that. But it paved the way for the band’s last great album, seven years later, as well as containing a fair few songs that, even though they may not fulfil Waters’ criteria, definitely fit mine.

Pink Floyd: The Final Cut

The Final Cut

Best song: The Fletcher Memorial Home

Worst song: Southampton Dock

Overall grade: 5

After Roger Waters left Pink Floyd in the early 80s, he took a bit of time off and then released a solo album. Of course, before Roger Waters left Pink Floyd he also took a bit of time off and then released a solo album. It’s really quite a shock the first time you pick up a copy of ‘The Final Cut’, released as a Pink Floyd record, and see the writing on the back: “By Roger Waters, performed by Pink Floyd.”

With Richard Wright firmly out of the band and David Gilmour and Nick Mason out of songwriting ideas, Roger took it upon himself to further his obsession with anti-war propaganda and dedicate an entire album to it. Much of it is poetry set to sparse backing music. Instrumental breaks are a rare commodity, positive messages are nonexistent, and it’s light years away from the fun sound collage at the end of ‘Bike’. But like it or not, for all official purposes, this is as much Pink Floyd as that – and if it seems something of an outlier in its style, it’s more than good enough to deserve the name in my opinion.

The quietest murmur opens ‘The Post War Dream’: ‘Tell me truly, tell me why/was Jesus crucified/was it for this that Daddy died?’ The song sounds like one of the quietest moments off The Wall – especially that ‘hint of accusation’ line, which contains exactly the same vocal inflection he used a few times on that album. The lyrics both set the tone and provide a good opening; Roger commenting on how society has lost the hope for the future it had after the war. This is particularly relevant coming, as it was, mere months after another war, the Falklands War, ended.

‘Your Possible Pasts’ has a chorus, of sorts. It’s a lonely and desperate song, and the chorus is still both of these things, but it’s loud and echoey as well. This contrasting effect is repeated on a few songs and really suits the album, as Roger sadly contemplates his subject matter and then suddenly snaps, his sadness turning to rage. But tellingly, the solo by Dave really adds something – its despondent quality makes us feel like there’s no hope left – showing that Roger works better with someone to play off of him.

‘One Of The Few’ has an incredibly delicate guitar part behind it, which is pretty, but I think it would work even better on piano. Wright’s input is definitely missed in these minimal songs. One of the most fully realised songs is ‘The Gunner’s Dream’. With the interesting piano chords and the great saxophone part, the lyrics don’t dominate quite as much here, and overall this is the song that sounds most like 70s Pink Floyd. And the following ‘Paranoid Eyes’ almost has a melody in its pretty, reminiscing middle section, bringing side one to a heart-wrenching close.

The single greatest moment on the album is undoubtedly ‘The Fletcher Memorial Home’, which proves my vaguely controversial opinion that a song doesn’t have a melody to have hooks – this one gets stuck in my head all the time. Roger’s so passionate on the song. They say you should write about what you believe in, and that’s definitely the case here.

A few of the shorter tracks are nothing more than linking pieces. They fit the concept and when listening to the album as a whole, they work, but they don’t add anything in particular. ‘Southampton Dock’ is probably the best example of this, but ‘The Hero’s Return’ also qualifies.

On the title track, as on quite a few other songs, I’m mostly waiting, anticipating those moments when Roger just loses control and suddenly goes really intense. To me, those moments of catharsis are what make the album really worthwhile. I guess that with Roger completely in charge of songwriting, he can write what best suits his voice, keeping things technically simple but emotionally complex.

I’ve read quite a few reviews of this album, although not for a while, and I can’t remember one that doesn’t take offense at ‘Not Now John’. One of the main complaints is its being completely anomalous with the rest of the album. It’s true, there are guitars pretty constantly throughout and you can hear it without turning the volume up full, but essentially the mood is the same. The female vocals in the background are distorted and creepy and Gilmour’s guitar soloing seems to move round in the mix, creating a sense of confusion, and as for the lyrics, they’re every bit as desperate as everything else on the record. I don’t see it as a failed attempt at a “rocker”, I see it as a successful attempt at a very twisted version of a rocker.

I do think this album works incredibly well as a unit; more so than as individual songs. It’s impossible to tell which songs are Wall outtakes and which are new, everything blends so well together. And while it seems like a daunting prospect, being lectured on the evils of war for forty-three minutes, if anyone can do it while keeping you emotionally involved and without sounding preachy; it’s Roger Waters. And apart from anything else, it’s a great lesson in how to make exactly the music you want without compromising yourself for anyone.

Roger Waters The Wall Live

Roger Waters The Wall Live

Date: 14 September 2013

Location: Wembley Stadium, London

Support: n/a

Special guests: Nope. David Gilmour did not appear. I’m sure it would have been well publicised by now if he had.

In my experience, how surreal a concert experience is is directly proportional to the length of time between booking it and actually going. Probably something to do with spending such a long time waiting for it to happen that it doesn’t feel like it ever actually will. Anyway, I booked this last November, the day tickets went on sale, so the entire night was pretty surreal.

It was by far the biggest concert I’ve ever been to, with around 70,000 people filling most of the stadium, and although I could have had a better view had I been standing, I probably couldn’t have done much better with the seats – they were a good balance between not being too sideways-on and not being too far away from the action, and although there was a camera tower that obscured a small part of the right side of the wall, I could see almost everything. When I arrived, it was still light outside, and around two thirds of the wall was already built, with just the middle section still to be filled in. This happened throughout the whole first act, and was very cleverly done – I’d rarely notice a stage hand actually putting a brick in place, I’d just see that the gap was slightly smaller than before.

Most of the setlist will probably come as no surprise to anyone who’s ever heard the Wall album, but there were a couple of extra additions in the first half. Inserted between ‘Brick 2’ and ‘Mother’ was a new song, ‘The Ballad of Jean-Charles de Menezes’ which Roger only wrote a couple of years ago. It was pretty short, and I think it did stand out as being noticeably different from the other songs – someone who didn’t know the music could probably tell it was the odd one out. That said, I liked it, and it was nice to have a personal moment of just Roger on his acoustic guitar rather than the huge production that was everything else. Later on, we had ‘What Shall We Do Now’, an outtake from the original Wall sessions which I think is more than good enough to be on the album, and fits in well with the hard rock style that characterises side two. The other outtake they included was ‘The Last Few Bricks’ which was nothing more than an excuse to complete the wall-building (except for one brick) and which doesn’t add anything, since it mostly reprises other songs.

Musically, everything was played pretty identically to the album – right down to having the exact same guitar tone as David Gilmour uses. So most of what you’re getting by seeing the live show is the multimedia experience – and now the tour’s been going for four years, this has been choreographed to perfection, with everything happening in exactly the right place at exactly the right moment. Things started off with a literal bang as a brightly coloured firework display went off during ‘In the Flesh’, which, if you thought it was a good opener on the album… here it was just unbelievable. The band needed no warming up but launched straight into one of the most passionate, high energy live performances I’ve ever seen.

Some of the most important visuals were all the large scale props. At the beginning of ‘The Thin Ice’, an aeroplane whizzed down a wire over the audience towards the stage, where it promptly explodes. Much later, during ‘In the Flesh’ and ‘Run Like Hell’, the famous Floyd inflatable pig made an appearance, painted black with the crossed hammer logos and some of the relevant slogans, like ‘Trust us’. It later descended onto part of the standing audience, who attacked it, and what wouldn’t I have given for the chance to catch the pig? Gerald Scarfe’s famous puppets also got their time on stage: huge, flashing-eyed versions of the mother, schoolmaster and wife crawled menacingly around the stage during their songs, and at the end of ‘Stop’, the Pink puppet himself, sat ontop of the wall, plummeted to the ground accompanied by a scream. As well as all this, more Scarfe animations got their turn to be projected onto the wall, coming to prominence in ‘Empty Spaces’, ‘Waiting for the Worms’ and ‘The Trial’.

Not everything was focused on the story, though. The giant projection wall allowed for some of the more general themes of the album to be expanded on more, and there was a much stronger focus on the anti-war side of things, as well as references to other things Roger’s spoken out against, including religion, consumerism, the government and the idea of a Big Brother-type society. I thought the way the images relating to these themes were worked in with scenes from the plot and original footage from the 1980 Wall tour was really clever.

As for the songs themselves, highlights for me included all parts of ‘Another Brick’, ‘Goodbye Blue Sky’, still one of the most moving songs ever – although possibly lightened slightly by the fact that when we heard the child’s voice; ‘Look mummy! There’s an aeroplane up in the sky’, someone a few rows behind me called ‘There is!’ and pointed to where, high above the open air stadium, an aeroplane was coincidentally flying overhead. I loved the very end of Act 1 where Roger sang ‘Goodbye Cruel World’ and placed the last brick himself, and even better was ‘Hey You’, possibly my favourite song of the night, where everyone on stage reappeared reinvigorated and ready to give the second half everything they had.

‘Comfortably Numb’ was never going to be as good as it could have been with Gilmour – and I was still holding out a tiny bit of hope for his appearance right up to that point – but it was still excellently performed, and perfectly staged, with just the one light shining on the guitarist on top of the darkened wall until he’d finished his solo, at which point Roger punched one of the bricks and it exploded in a cascade of colours. As expected, ‘Run Like Hell’ was a great one for getting the crowd going, but its followup ‘Waiting For The Worms’ was a more unexpected highlight, since that’s never been a particular favourite of mine. And lastly, the final minutes where the whole band played ‘Outside the Wall’ amongst the ruined bricks was an immensely satisfying denoument.

There are pros and cons to both small and large concerts, but this one I really think could only work with a huge number of people, partly because of the size of the production but also partly because of the connection between everyone who was there: in moments like when everyone was chanting “Tear down the wall!” the audience completely became one, and at times, it really did feel like we were all banging our hearts against some mad bugger’s wall.

Pink Floyd: The Wall

The Wall

Best song: Comfortably Numb

Worst song: Stop

Overall grade: 6

To some people, The Wall is one of the greatest rock operas ever written, able to connect with millions of people on every level. To others, it’s pseudo-intellectual teenage angst that can’t be taken seriously. However, to me, it’s just the album with the second most minimalistic cover art ever, after the Beatles’ ‘White Album’.

I’m not really going to claim that the cover art is the best thing about this album (although I do weirdly like it a lot) because this album and I have a lot of history together. It all started on the bus into school one Thursday a rather long time ago now. I had been instructed that I should ‘try listening to Pink Floyd’ and, upon asking where I should begin, was directed towards side three of The Wall. Because my journey didn’t have time for the full album. So I listened to the first five songs of that section, quite enjoying them but also thinking ‘Won’t it be nice when this has finished and I can listen to Mayday Parade?’ And then Comfortably Numb came on.

I truly believe that song changed my life the first time I heard it – as far as music goes, at the very least. See, there’s a whole debate that goes on about whether or not Pink Floyd classify as prog rock (if you’re not involved, I advise staying well away) and a point that doesn’t get mentioned enough is that they are very much a gateway drug. That song opened my eyes to a lot of new ideas, particularly the fact that an instrumental section can be just as important, if not more so, than a vocal section.

After the song was over, I played it again. Then I went home and I played the whole thing, over and over. Then I picked up ‘Wish You Were Here’ and ‘Dark Side’. Then I started on the hard drugs and began listening to Genesis.

So that’s my story; onto the album itself. Its creation has become legend – the tale of Roger Waters spitting on a fan during a concert has been told time and time again, and the alienation he felt from his audience and his desire to be separate led him to concoct the idea of a literal wall between himself and them. So he wrote this album, telling of a rock star named Pink Floyd (of all things) who turns all his problems into bricks in his wall to isolate himself from the world. I can see what people are saying when they call it ‘teenage angst’, but isn’t that kind of the point? That this Pink guy never really grew up because he just refused to face the world but stayed trapped inside himself… someone like that can’t be expected to think in a mature way.

This album is split across two LPs, the first about Pink building up his wall through childhood and his early career, and the second, his descent into madness behind the wall, and each contain a mixture of ‘focus’ tracks that are full songs with a proper structure, and ‘linking’ tracks which serve mostly to move on the story but are still a good listen for the most part. (Not filler – where would this album be without them?) I could probably find something to say about all of them, but I’ll try to keep it to essentials.

The first side opens with ‘In the Flesh’, which shows the direction Waters is taking the music on this album – in that there’s not always too much of it, since this is more lyrical – and introduces a guitar riff that gets repeated throughout the record. Waters’ idiosyncratic vocals are probably my favourite thing about this darkly overblown opener. In this section we also have the band’s only number one single (Christmas number one, in fact) ‘Another Brick in the Wall, pt. 2’ and while I think it’s a raucous, danceable classic, and one of the few examples of disco having some kind of substance, I actually prefer its ‘Part 1’ counterpart, the quietly introspective moment where Pink thinks about his father. Still, that’s not even the side highlight: that would be ‘Mother’, which is hauntingly real and very depressing as we are told ‘Mother’s gonna make all of your nightmares come true… ooh, mother’s gonna help you build the wall.’

Opening the next side is the incredibly poignant Blitz-themed song ‘Goodbye Blue Sky’ and though it’s short, it’s probably the most memorable part of the side. Then the pace is picked up for the next trio of songs, of which ‘Young Lust’ is notable as the only song other than the huge hits to be co-written by Gilmour, and ‘One Of My Turns’ is notable just for being great – Waters is really convincing in his performance as the madman Pink. It segues right into ‘Don’t Leave Me Now’ after he’s come back to his senses and is trying to apologise to his wife, begging her to stay, and the juxtaposition of these songs highlights the schizophrenia of the album.

Although most of it didn’t grab me as much straight away, I’ve come to love the whole of side three. It basically all takes place in Pink’s hotel room after he’s finished the wall, and as such it has a very claustrophobic feel, ever present except for the release during the magical choruses of ‘Comfortably Numb’. ‘Hey You’ is a great builder and something of an anthem, ‘Is There Anybody Out There’ is a cool, scared, atmospheric piece which comes right before ‘Nobody Home’, which basically describes Pink’s incredibly mundane life alone inside his wall, and has absolutely amazing lyrics to convey the hopelessness of his situation and how listless he feels. I won’t try to actually describe ‘Comfortably Numb’: it never fails to give me that involuntary shiver that a really good song elicits, and I’m not arrogant enough to think I know the words to describe that.

Side four is probably the weakest side overall, as it’s where the tunes start to get less memorable as the most important thing is tying up the plot. Also, quite a few of the songs are reprises of some sort - 'The Show Must Go On' sounds very similar to 'Mother'. But we do get a much more self-assured reprise of ‘In the Flesh’ (no question mark) and the best hard rocker the Floyd ever did, the epic ‘Run Like Hell’ with the awesome guitar riff which became their concert encore for many years. Second last song ‘The Trial’ gets a lot of hate for its Broadway style composition owing to the caricatures of the characters as each speaks their thoughts on Pink, but I personally think it’s a great ending to the saga, really showing how ridiculous Pink’s whole outlook on life is and how disturbed he’s become. It’s over the top grandiosity also presents a neat contrast to the stripped down acoustic closer ‘Outside the Wall’, where the wall is torn down, Pink is reunited with the outside world and the themes of the album are expanded to relate to a more general situation.

(By the way, is anyone getting a serious sense of déjà vu in that this is yet another Floyd review? I know I am. It feels like I haven’t covered Yes for ages. Must get to that soon.)

Pink Floyd: Animals

Animals

Best song: Difficult choice, but I’ll pick Sheep.

Worst song: Not applicable.

Overall grade: 7

Round of applause, everyone, please. Pink Floyd become the first band on this website to achieve the great honour of having not one but two albums with a top grade of 7, something which won’t happen a lot, but here I just can’t help myself. This is also the first album I’ve reviewed that I refused to pick a worst song for, but we’ll get to that.

Somewhere between touring the ‘Wish You Were Here’ album and building Britannia Row studios, Roger Waters, now in full-on concept mode, came up with the idea for writing an album based around George Orwell’s novel ‘Animal Farm’. Then, he took a pair of songs that he’d worked on in sessions for the previous album, then known as ‘You Gotta Be Crazy’ and ‘Raving & Drooling’ and reworked them to fit the concept, turning them into what we now know as ‘Dogs’ and ‘Sheep’, so I guess it’s not really a surprise that this album sounds in some ways musically similar to ‘Wish You Were Here’. In other ways it doesn’t, though. Whereas on that album it felt like he was complaining and feeling sorry for himself from a distance, here he’s been influenced by the punk scene that’s just started to appear in the UK, and he’s angry and wants something to be done about these issues he’s writing about.

The opening and closing track to the album is ‘Pigs on the Wing’ (same melody each time, slightly different lyrics) and it adds both nothing and everything. I’d be shocked if it was anyone’s favourite track (either part) since it’s just basic acoustic guitar strumming and Roger singing a little love ditty to his girlfriend, but at the same time it’s what really takes the album to the next level for me. Without it, you’d just have three songs that use animal metaphors for types of people; with it you get a complete concept, and also a ray of hope in the otherwise-downbeat world of the album. It also adds a personal side, making the record feel like it’s about one guy’s experiences with all these types of people and the eventual realisation that no matter how much things might suck, he has this girl he loves to help him through, which is really quite touching.

The rest of side one is entirely taken up by ‘Dogs’. I’m just going to repeat what’s always said about this song and point out that it’s undoubtedly one if David Gilmour’s best vocal parts, ever – one of the first times where his hard-rock voice is really convincing, and he definitely shows us the ruthlessness of the ‘dogs’ he describes: I love when he sings the ‘you’ll get the chance to STICK THE KNIFE IN!’ line. Gilmour also plays slow, calculated solos which enhance the feeling of paranoia while drums march ominously in the background. I mean, it’s actually a fairly simple song if you think about it - but it’s damn good at hiding that fact. I don’t know what I respect more; a band with amazing technical proficiency, or a band that actually doesn’t play that well but makes it so you barely notice.

‘Pigs (Three Different Ones)’ follows, and it begins with that weird, spacey, piano melody, before a relaxing guitar part comes in, and gradually, the melody changes and a few more effects and instruments come in until SUDDENLY, it’s no longer mellow and gentle, it’s a full on foot-tapping funk song that completely denounces the old saying ‘you can’t dance to Pink Floyd’ even while it’s completely trashing various people in power (the identity of two of them remains unknown; the third is Mary Whitehouse, a name which doesn’t mean a whole lot to someone born in 1996.) Well, you can’t dance to the middle section so much, since it’s full of all kinds of weird sounds and guitars fed through machines to actually sound like pigs, but it’s still all really clever.

The easiest way of picking a best song on this album is to pull a name out of a hat, but maybe I’d put ‘Sheep’ twice in the hat to give it a better chance. After a quiet opening, the song becomes quiet chaotic, with a panicked vocal and a mess of instruments falling over each other, perfectly conveying the fear of the sheep; the loyal followers. (So, to recap: one slow and deliberate song, one fast and upbeat one, and one all-out crazy one. Great contrasting but complementary styles.) The echo of the ‘dragged down by a stone’ line and the chilling recital of the Lord’s prayer are inspired additions to an already perfect song. The darkness is lifted by a rousing electric guitar riff, also the song’s best hook, that begins a couple of minutes towards the end, as the sheep rise up to take on the dogs, proving that Roger Waters wasn’t always relentlessly cynical.

Then we have the reprise of ‘Pigs on the Wing’ to round things off in that simple but impossible to dislike way it does, and I hate it, but only because it means the album is coming to an end. I love it really. ‘And any fool knows a dog needs a home… a shelter from pigs on the wing’. It’s quite essential to bring things round full circle and tie everything together, and that’s why I absolutely can’t select a worst song for this album, because without any one song, it simply could not be a 7-rated album, or work as a cohesive piece at all.

Roger Waters, speculation says, is on the last leg of his massive Wall tour (which I am going to see in six days, hooray!) so as soon as that’s all over, I’ll begin thinking of ways to persuade him to take the entirety of this album out on tour. Maybe he can perform it at Battersea Power Station (as featured on the stunning cover) before they perform the criminal act they’re planning of turning it into an apartment complex.

Pink Floyd: Wish You Were Here

Wish You Were Here

Best song: Shine On You Crazy Diamond, part 1

Worst song: Welcome To The Machine

Overall grade: 5

Coming a full two and a half years after ‘Dark Side’, this marks the longest gap between two Pink Floyd albums so far, and they spent much of this lost time banging on tin cans. That’s not any kind of metaphor – no, they decided to resurrect an old project, ‘Household Objects’, which comprised music played on anything except for actual musical instruments. Now, nothing has ever been released (officially or otherwise) from these sessions, but it could be interesting, no? After all, all instruments have to be made by someone, from something, and all the band were essentially doing is cutting out the manufacturer and doing it themselves. Really just a step on from when they started getting involved in the production. However, that idea never really got off the ground, and so Roger Waters began to write some more songs to be played on more conventional instruments: six in all; and four would appear on this record with two being saved for the next one.

Which brings me to the big question: how can an album with five songs (since one is in two parts) which are all great, get the same or lower grade than an album which has serious weaknesses? Well – something I mention fairly often is songs that work in the context of an album, but not individually. Here, I see it as the other way round. Taken on their own, each of these songs are awesome, but if you put them together, they don’t quite work as a complete piece. The difference in style between ‘Crazy Diamond, pt. 1’ and ‘Welcome To The Machine’ is jarring and although the segue between ‘Have A Cigar’ and the title track is clever, where it becomes staticky, unclear radio music for a while, the two songs require a very different mindset and I can never get used to them next to each other. So, although I often play all these songs, it’s very rare for me to play them together as a set.

The three shorter tracks are very much overshadowed by the massive ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’, which is both the longest song Floyd ever did (it just hits the 26 minute mark) and the one with the most parts (there are nine, count ‘em!) Parts 1-5 open the record and the slightly less essential Parts 6-9 close it, although these ones I do put together, since parts 1-9 in their entirety are actually a great experience that surprisingly few people have tried. Though I don’t enjoy the whole composition as much as ‘Echoes’, it’s probably a more sophisticated piece. As in most of this album, Rick Wright dominates, which is nice, and he’s very subtle and atmospheric, giving everything time to breathe and develop, with perfectly-timed solos by him and Gilmour appearing all over the place. The expertly constructed piece shows the mark of a band with experience at writing these epics, but who are certainly not complacent, and it feels lonely and isolated throughout, before ending on a few bars of the melody of ‘See Emily Play’, their 1967 top 10 single, which feels both familiar and out of place – an appropriately worrying ending to the song and album.

The title track is what all of Roger’s acoustic numbers from ‘More’, plus ‘If’, ‘Grantchester Meadows and ‘Pillow of Winds’, have been leading up to – the ultimate in heartrending and pure beauty, both musical and lyrical… it’s one of those songs that I can’t imagine myself ever not wanting to listen to. ‘Running over the same old ground; what have we found? The same old fears’ gets me every time.

But the two tracks before it are the very different ones… ‘Welcome To The Machine’ is a very good song that never quite seemed to justify its seven and a half minutes to me, but at five or so it wold be excellent. It’s very cold, harsh and mechanical, shutting people out with Wright’s keyboards giving it a very tense feel, and it is weird. I could believe it was recorded inside the machine it talks about. ‘Have a Cigar’ is different again, Roy Harper’s guest vocals combining the sarcasm of Roger’s and Dave’s ability to stay in tune, and he seems to have the confidence neither of them have. The rhythmic feel really suits the song and the attempt at a more straightforward rock style almost foreshadows the direction the band would take for some of the post-Waters era, interestingly, although the guitar solo doesn’t nearly match up to the one on ‘Wish You Were Here’.

In all seriousness, though, I’ve often heard it said that ‘The Final Cut’ is the most depressing Pink Floyd album, but I think I could make a strong case for this one. Though musically they’d survived, I can’t even imagine how they felt about the loss and breakdown of their early bandmate Syd Barrett, and hearing their thoughtful and sometimes harrowing playing on these songs shows how much it affected them – even without considering the story, now music folklore, of Syd himself turning up in the studio while they were recording ‘Shine On’ and asking when he needed to start playing.

Course, he later called the song ‘a bit old’. Like that’s ever going to be the case.

Pink Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon

Dark Side of the Moon

Best song: Us & Them

Worst song: you don’t mess with Dark Side by taking songs out. but, Speak To Me

Overall grade: 6

I’m not sure why I’m even reviewing this. I mean, it’s such a sidenote within the Floyd discography, and a really obscure one at that, that I doubt anyone would really notice if I were to just miss it out. But hey, in the interests of completism, I might share a few words about this rarity.

OK, all jokes aside, this record is a pretty big deal. It’s sold around 45 million copies and that’s not counting all the people who download it, listen to it on Youtube or the radio or borrow it from a friend. It’s estimated that one in five British households own a copy. It’s just celebrated its 40^th anniversary with a bunch of celebrations like a new website dedicated to it and its own radio play. It seems to have some kind of secret formula, that it later lent to Fleetwood Mac about four years later but that has rarely been seen since, that gives it mainstream commercial appeal without compromising its actual artistic merit.

I’m sure I have very little new wisdom or insights to impart about Dark Side: much like those millions of others, I think it’s pretty great, although I don’t think it’s the greatest thing Pink Floyd ever did. I mean, I love ‘Echoes’ and live ‘Interstellar Overdrive’, and sometimes I find this album a little bit too safe, with its conventional melodies and instrumentation. On the other hand, it is a masterpiece in the way it effortlessly flows from one song to the next, becoming almost one complete song along the lines of Tull’s Thick as a Brick. For that reason it’s very difficult to pick a worst song, because there are a handful of interlinking sections that you’d never put on a mix tape, but that the album just wouldn’t work in the same way without. The first of these (and most obvious example) is ‘Speak to Me’, essentially a sound collage of all the sound effects used on the album: heartbeats, ticking clocks, cash registers, manic laughs, and the candid human voices talking about madness and violence. (It wasn’t really written by Nick Mason – his songwriting credit was a gife from Roger Waters. Waters gives gifts?) And yeah, it’s just all these sounds randomly arranged, but it gives the album a real continuity when each of these sounds comes up again later and they feel more familiar, like they’re meant to be there.

Quick rundown of the rest of the songs: ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’ and ‘Us & Them’ are the two sections I most look forward to. Everyone talks about Clare Torry’s vocals on ‘Great Gig’ and they are truly breathtaking, but they wouldn’t be so effective if it wasn’t for Rick Wright’s beautiful piano. For a while it was entitled ‘Religion Section’ and I don’t know if they were trying to musically give people a religious experience or just represent one, but some people are that strongly affected by it. Wright also shines on ‘Us & Them’, where he plays a part that’s more complicated than it seems on first listen. Lyrically, Roger’s in his safe territory of anti-war slogans, and his confidence and passion show through. Plus, Dick Parry’s saxophone solo is just brilliant.

Some of the other songs are more radio-friendly (possibly down to them not having saxophone solos?) such as the mournful but lush ballad ‘Breathe’, which is the first vocal track, and is also reprised slightly later on, another moment that makes the album flow well. ‘Time’ is more of a midtempo tune with swooshing guitars and thought-provoking lyrics, and ‘Money’ provides some much-needed speed and energy to the record with its funk and blues influences and its cash registers rhythmically chiming away in 7/4 time, which is not as cool as 13/8 time, which is the most awesome time signature, but is still fairly cool.

‘On the Run’ must have been really ahead of its time when it was released, its synth sounds never heard before, but it hasn’t aged as well as most of the record. Personally, I actually really like the retro-video-game sound of it and the constant loops, but a lot of people don’t and I can see why. ‘Any Colour You Like’ is an instrumental bridge that divides side two in half and prepares you for ‘Brain Damage’, which is dark and ominous in its verses, but still manages to have massively hooky arena-sized choruses, and segues nicely into ‘Eclipse’, the day to its night, if you will, which builds up steadily and ends on the triumphant and cathartic cry of ‘everything under the sun is in tune, but the sun is eclipsed by the moon!’

So, the reason why this album has sold 45 million copies and counting? It’s got something for everyone. You can appreciate it whether you’re young or old, whether you’ve heard thousands of albums or just listen to the radio in the car, whether you prefer your songs to be conventional or totally deconstructed. ‘Dark Side’ plays with a lot of different musical styles while never embracing any of them enough to shut out people who aren’t fans. It’s welcoming and accessible, requiring no previous knowledge of the band’s music and history to enjoy, but knowing those things can only add to your enjoyment. And it feels like a journey. In the same way that people like films because they feel connected to the story and want to stay with the characters to the end, so too do people feel an affinity with this album, whether they know why or not, and want to be a part of it for its duration. But maybe this widespread appeal is also its biggest flaw. Maybe in providing something for everyone, it can never be completely perfect for anyone – the album that’s everyone’s second place but nobody’s first.

Pink Floyd: Obscured By Clouds

Obscured By Clouds

Best song: Stay

Worst song: Absolutely Curtains

Overall grade: 4

Pink Floyd’s last attempt at a film soundtrack went swimmingly. Apart from the fact that they completely fell out with the film’s director and so released this album as something that, officially, had nothing to do with the film. Clearly assuming that anyone who then saw the actual film, ‘La Vallee’, would assume its use of exactly the same songs was a coincidence. Luckily, this never had to be an issue, because the people in charge actually changed the film’s title (or gave it an extra title) to fit in with the album. So as you can see, the band had plenty of experience of petty disagreements before they started their own war in the 80s.

That’s a bit of a history lesson, but it’s got nothing to do with the album really. What is interesting about this one is that it was written essentially in tandem with their artistic and commercial breakthrough ‘Dark Side of the Moon’. That particular piece was already in its early stages of development when the band were approached and asked to score something for Barbet Schroeder. Consequently, the whole thing reads like an outtakes and demos collection from ‘Dark Side’.

I imagine that for someone who worships ‘Dark Side’ and thinks every record should sound like it, this would be an absolute gem. For me, it’s a definite poor relation. Some of the ‘Clouds’ songs exactly correlate with those on ‘Dark Side’ a year later. The most blatant is ‘Childhood’s End’ in its ripoff of ‘Time’: the theme and structure of the lyrics are identical, the main melody is kind of similar, and at the beginning there’s what is basically ticking – a clear equivalent of the chiming clocks on the other song. ‘Burning Bridges’ is also the exact equal of ‘Breathe’ in its soft edged vocals and mellow atmosphere, and out of context I think I’d find it challenging to tell their openings apart. Lastly, ‘The Gold It’s In The…’ can only be ‘Money’, the token rocker. They still don’t seem all that comfortable with the style, but they’re getting better at hiding that fact, which must count for something.

Aside from those three, the other songs don’t have obvious counterparts, but all bar one would have seemed right at home on ‘Dark Side’. You could probably create a playlist that structures them into a double album if you’re a person who doesn’t think messing with the running order of ‘Dark Side’ is sacrilege (so not me then.) The one song that would feel out of place is ‘Free Four’, which is almost a throwback to the more lighthearted side of Syd Barrett musically, with a bouncy rhythm and a carefree demeanour, even during lines like ‘You are the angel of death’.

The two other vocal tracks are ‘Wot’s… Uh, The Deal?’, a Gilmour dominated affair that happens to be one of his favourites. I can’t argue with that. It has lots of guitars and his trademark soothing vocals and a very pleasant instrumental break in the middle, but is removed from easy-listening territory by the dark quality of Waters’ lyrics. ‘Stay’ is my absolute favourite. It gets the strongest emotional reaction from me out of anything on this album; I can just feel the yearning in that opening section. The brightly-coloured lyrics are very evocative and though nobody mentions is when discussing best Gilmour guitar solos, I can’t get enough of his wah-wah solo on this song.

To round out the album we have a handful of instrumentals. ‘Obscured By Clouds’ is very Floyd; some weird distorted guitars over an atmospheric backing, can’t really go wrong. ‘When You’re In’ has more going on and is pretty cool too, but is it film music? I can’t really imagine it as the backing track to anything, but who knows? ‘Mudmen’ goes through a lot of changes for its length and doesn’t really flow. Some of the sections are good – there’s a part near the end that’s awesome to listen to with headphones on – and some of them are less good, like the screeching guitar that’s not all that enjoyable to listen to. Strikes me as more a medley of ideas than a developed track. And the final ‘Absolutely Curtains’ doesn’t do a lot for me, just wandering around for a while. Plus, there’s another large-group chant at the end, for at least a couple of minutes. Is this becoming a thing, the Floyd finishing off their songs with famous chants? I can’t get into that, it disrupts the flow of a song.

So, in conclusion: the beta-test version of ‘Dark Side’. Listen to it for interest’s sake, but it’s hardly essential.

Pink Floyd: Meddle

Meddle

Best song: Echoes, what else?

Worst song: Seamus

Overall grade: 5

(I’m gonna speed up on the Floyd reviews a little because I’d like to have The Wall reviewed before I go off to see Roger Waters perform it on September 14. Which is only a month away, so it looks like I’ll be speeding up a lot. We’ll see.)

Ever heard an album where one side is absolutely outstanding, a complete work of genius, and you can’t get enough of it, and the other side is sorta lacklustre and a complete letdown in comparison? Ever wonder why the good and bad music on one of these albums isn’t more evenly spaced so as not to be so top/bottom-heavy? Well, on the second count at least, this one is excused, because the work of genius is one complete extended piece running over the whole of the second side. Anyone who’s read my piece on sidelongs will know that this one, ‘Echoes’, is actually one of my three favourite songs of all time, so the album it comes from really should score at least a 6, but I can’t bring myself to get excited about most of side one at all.

The sole exception is opener ‘One Of These Days’. It’s the only Floyd song ever to feature Nick Mason take lead vocals, and unrelated, it’s also an instrumental. (That joke never fails to amuse me.) Incorporating hard rock and psychedelia, it uses twin basses and drums to create a harsh, aggressive atmosphere that delightfully torments the listener for five minutes, giving them high hopes for what’s to come.

Hopes are crushed, though, as ‘A Pillow of Winds’ comes in. Roger was clearly getting bored with the whole acoustic folk thing, as this one’s dull and lifeless without any of the lyrical imagery of earlier equivalents. ‘Fearless’ is an attempt at a power ballad that has none of what singles Pink Floyd out from bland radio music, except for that annoying ‘You’ll never walk alone’ chant at the end. ‘San Tropez’ is an essentially pointless foray into the world of lounge jazz with some of the world’s most boring keyboard parts and ‘Seamus’ is just pathetic. The fact that they tried to get a dog to sing a song really shows that they were at a loss for new material.

But then comes the treat, the exquisite fudge cake after the mundane spaghetti bolognese. I’m one of those hipsters who doesn’t think this band ever topped ‘Echoes’. Maybe on some level they agreed with me – it’s certainly telling that they never attempted another sidelong after this. And it shouldn’t be as truly astounding as it is. The four of them didn’t have that much technical skill, training or even experience to work with, yet they managed to pool the talents they did have and come up with this, and that just makes the finished product even more of an achievement.

Much of the middle section of the piece is based around sound effects, something the Floyd are skilled at incorporating into their music. Most of them are sea-related; birds, wind, whales, a submarine, and, yes, echoes, all of which make the track feel open, spacious and free. But there are some shrieks which give the song a darker edge – a sea casualty, perhaps? These water references carry through into the lyrics, which are also the first of Waters’ musings on the human condition, and their combination of abstract and intent make them really quite beautiful: ‘And no-one showed us to the land and no-one knows the wheres or whys/And something stirs and something tries and starts to climb towards the light’. But Rick Wright is the member who truly shines on his piece, from his ‘ping!’s at the beginning of the song that always send a shiver down my spine to his marvellous organ solo that appears just before the final vocal part. Honestly, this song includes every style of music they have covered and would cover(except for disco and 80s synth-pop, but they’d feel a bit out of place, no?), it’s the perfect balance of melodic and experimental and listening to it engages both the head and the heart. The input ingredients are simple, but the output will make your breath catch in your throat.

Has anyone ever noticed that all the bad songs on this album are fluffy, positive songs? Clearly, endless negativity and cynicism was always destined to be the place where Roger would shine. And now, with this album of extremes safely out of the way, it wouldn’t be too long until he’d realise that too…

Pink Floyd: Atom Heart Mother

Atom Heart Mother

Best song: Fat Old Sun

Worst song: Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast

Overall grade: 5

‘If I were a good man; I’d understand the spaces between friends…’ Irrelevant, but I just like that lyric.

I probably know more about the history of Pink Floyd than I do about any other band, and they don’t at all seem like the kind of people I can imagine working with an orchestra – more than anything else, the way they work just doesn’t coordinate with the way orchestras work. Yet that’s exactly what they did for the title track of this fifth album in 1970, an album which generates opinions ranging across the spectrum from underrated masterpiece through flawed but worthwhile all the way down to total garbage.

I take issue with the total garbage idea, because while I can see the reasons for dismissing the title track and the final track, there are also three songs in the middle which are close in sound to a lot of the more ‘mainstream’ Floyd songs of their commercial mid-70s period. Surely ‘If’ is just a Roger Waters foray into musical and lyrical styles he’d then use for radio favourite ‘Wish You Were Here’? ‘If’ is even more minimalistic, barely a hint of guitar and a whispered voice giving you the chance to focus wholly on the lyrics – which are some of Roger’s best, since this is before he started trying to get too philosophical.

Rick Wright writes one of his last solo compositions for the band, ‘Summer 68’, a sad, nostalgic look at the relationship between rock star and groupie. The verses are softly sung but the volume and emotion behind the ‘how do you feel?!’ lines of the chorus always catches me off guard. If the song’s not based off a real event, he’s good at pretending.

But it’s Gilmour’s ‘Fat Old Sun’ that steals the show. I love its simple soothing melody and the relaxed, summery quality of Gilmour’s voice as the song gradually, almost unnoticeably builds. The electric guitar’s introduced for a solo with about two minutes to go and while it’s not one of his best solos, the interplay with the acoustic rhythm part is interesting. The song as a whole strikes me as a slightly more lightweight precursor to ‘On an Island’, Gilmour’s solo album from over thirty-five years later.

The title track, while often called ‘freaked out’, is actually pretty and melodious most of the way through. Example: the whole of the ‘Breast Milky’ section (although I can’t stand these subtitles). And is it ‘Funky Dung’ with the majestic horn part? Things like this stop the track from being just a bunch of atmospheric noises sandwiched together and turn it into something that actually has a flow – the only truly avant-garde section is ‘Mind Your Throats Please’, and I really enjoy the contrast of this with the classical-rock feel of before.

The complete opposite to ‘Ummagumma’, every member of the band seems to have been involved in the making of this piece. And while it might not always be obvious at times when the orchestra and choir are stealing the spotlight, there’s definitely been a significant development in both Rick and David’s playing – or maybe they’re just more engrossed in the material. The piece also makes good use of the technique of the ‘returning theme’, where a motif from the start of the piece is also included later for continuity.

My major criticism about the piece is that, while it’s jam-packed with great sounds, it’s not actually about anything. When the band wrote ‘Saucerful of Secrets’, it was an aural representation of a battle, and then would go on to write ‘Echoes’, about connections between human beings, but this one, which I’ve always seen as a kind of middle ground between the two, it just a showcase of the effects they’d been trying out.

But while I enjoy the first three quarters of this album without reservations, the final track, ‘Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast’, is a big letdown. Credited to the entire band, but mostly Nick Mason’s brainchild, this is basically a recording of Floyd roadie Alan Stiles eating breakfast. The crunching of toast and occasional appreciative words are an entertaining novelty on the first play, but after hearing the album ten times it’s lost its appeal and becomes annoying. The piano and guitar parts don’t excite me at all and more to the point, they don’t remind me of eating breakfast! And this is already pretty long for a single album, so a whole minute of listening to bacon crackling without any other instrumentation is really excessive. The only bit I quite like begins around the 9 minute mark, but still no breakfast related feelings.

Historically, this album is important because it’s Pink Floyd’s first sidelong, their only major songwriting collaboration with an outsider (Ron Geesin, who’s worked with Roger Waters previously, co-wrote the title track) and because it’s the first album to feature nothing but a picture of a cow on the cover. And for the most part, the material inside manages to match this importance.

I love the cow, though. Not surprised it took them to #1 in the album charts.

Pink Floyd: Ummagumma

Ummagumma

Best song: Careful With That Axe Eugene

Worst song: The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party

Overall grade: Live album – 6 and studio album – 3. Overall – 4 because of inconsistency .

Pink Floyd’s first live album is also their best. That’s not to say I don’t like the other ones, but… well, put it this way, if I had a time machine and I was allowed to use it to go back in time to see live music, Pink Floyd in the sixties would be right at the top of my list. As it happens, I don’t have a time machine, and I never will, because if time travel was going to be invented, surely the people from the future would have travelled back in time and told us? But that’s hardly on topic. Point is, this album is the only official document of live 60s Floyd there is.

All four live tracks are better than their studio versions, and three of them are amazing in studio, so that tells you something. ‘Careful With That Axe Eugene’ was only ever released as a b-side and never worked so well in the studio setting, but live it’s mind-blowing, a masterpiece of playing with dynamics, suspense and shock complete with bone-chilling screams and the single vocal line which is growled with an ominous intensity.

‘Astronomy Domine’ is done in more of a psychedelic jam-band style, and again both are superb, although it’s always sad to hear David singing instead of Syd. ‘Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun’ is majestic and powerful in its restrained quietness for the first few minutes, before becoming more improvisational near the end, and even though its counterpart on the ‘Saucerful’ album is one of my favourite Floyd songs ever, I still just about prefer this rendition. And lastly, there’s ‘A Saucerful of Secrets’ itself, the most similar to its original version, but with a ‘Celestial Voices’ section that’s infinitely more beautiful.

Then, because the band didn’t have any group compositions planned, and clearly didn’t like each other enough to get together and write any, so, ELP-style, each of them was given a quarter of a studio album to fill with their solo work. To be honest, they should have just made it a double live album, including Interstellar Overdrive and other such things, but maybe the record company wanted some new material.

One of the band members rose to the challenge superbly and came up with two classic songs, and the other three, well, didn’t. I’d like to say that it was somebody surprising like Nick Mason who excelled, but no, it was predictably Roger Waters. He was the only member to split his portion of record into two wildly different musical ideas. His first contribution was ‘Grantchester Meadows’, possibly his most successful pastoral folk rock style piece, although ‘If’ comes close. Spacious, gently played and softly sung, someone who normally sees the Floyd as too weird could easily enjoy this song, so long as they turn it off before the fly gets swatted at the end. However, the same can’t be said for ‘Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave and Grooving With A Pict’ (on my list of 5 Greatest Song Titles Ever™; coming soon) which I can’t in good faith refer to as music. Essentially, it’s Roger testing out all the studio effects he could, and only on his voice – there’s no instruments at all in this song… which technically makes it one of the first purely electronic songs? The Scottish poetry and animal noises are hilarious once in a while, but I’d be concerned if someone claimed to play it every day.

Going down in quality, David Gilmour writes a piece called ‘The Narrow Way’, which I think could have been really good if the rest of the group had been involved with writing it. Sadly, I don’t think a 23-year-old Gilmour was capable of successfully writing a 12-minute track, so although there’s some groovy space rock in the second part and a good melody in the final, vocal part, it feels more like an unfinished demo than a real song.

Down one more, Rick Wright pens a pseudo-classical piece based on a Greek myth about a guy called Sisyphus who was forced to roll a boulder up a hill, watch it fall back down and repeat this for eternity. Does it sound like Rick’s getting ideas above his station? He is. The piece isn’t worthless, as Rick’s a good player and this does show through at times, like the piano section which is quite enjoyable, but overall it’s hardly essential listening.

Since it’s Rick’s birthday at the time I’m writing this (July 28) I feel compelled to mention that he did write some good songs and I’m a big fan of his 1996 solo album.

Last, there’s Nick Mason’s ‘The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party’. My favourite thing about this closer is the title and my second favourite is the flute intro/outro, which is played by his now-ex-wife. The rest of it is a 9-minute Mason drum solo, and although I really like long drum solos played by skilled, exciting and inventive players, Nick Mason is none of these things, and I would not encourage listening multiple times in search of hidden depths – there aren’t any. Nick is a good speaker and writer, though, so perhaps he should have used his section of the record to tell a story.

A necessary purchase, but if you eventually start using the studio disc as a coaster, don’t be too surprised.

Pink Floyd: More

Soundtrack To The Film ‘More’

Best song: Up the Khyber

Worst song: A Spanish Piece

Overall grade: 3

This is the oddest record of all among early period Floyd, and when I say that, I mean it’s odd because it’s so normal. The amount of experimental stuff you’d expect from listening to the surrounding albums is drastically reduced. There are a few exceptions, which are generally the high points, but for the most part, when you’re trying to concentrate on a film about hitchhikers, former Nazis and heroin, you don’t want to be distracted by sound collages in the background.

Yeah, that’s why the album’s such an anomaly: it wasn’t actually ever planned by the band themselves. Instead it was commissioned by a Barbet Schroeder, who was a weird French film director, for his new movie ‘More’. Now, I have never seen it, since from what I understand its only real appeal is that it features a bunch of songs by one of the all time greatest rock bands.  But I’ve read an online summary which actually just confuses me more than ever: knowing the gritty subject matter it covers, I would expect some dark and foreboding type music, rather than this album.

Because what you actually get is a whole bunch of folky tunes! Which is unexpected but not unpleasant. Songs like ‘Cirrus Minor’, ‘Crying Song’ and ‘Green Is The Colour’ have very little to them, and while they’re fairly enjoyable, they and most of the instrumentals on this album are a real sidenote in the band’s catalogue; somewhat surplus to requirements. These songs, since they were meant to be backing music, as an album are not very satisfying.

The one ‘song’ I really can’t deal with is ‘A Spanish Piece’, an unlistenable collection of every Spanish music cliché and a whole bunch of inaccurate stereotypes. Gilmour should be ashamed of this one. It’s only just over a minute long, but even so, I find it very difficult not to skip it. I would probably put the album a whole grade higher without it, to be honest.

The only other songs I have minor issues with are ‘The Nile Song’ and ‘Ibiza Bar’. I love Pink Floyd, in the main, because they were very good at playing to their strengths, but these two songs are something of a misstep – the cock-rock style doesn’t suit them at all. Luckily they’re balanced out by one really fantastic tune, an instrumental called ‘Up the Khyber’ that mostly just features Rick Wright and Nick Mason. It’s experimental and jammy and was originally played live as part of an unreleased ‘The Man and the Journey’ suite, and the interplay between these two musicians that we rarely see is fascinating.

If you’re a big Pink Floyd fan, then get this because it’s decent, but get it last because it pales in comparison to everything else they did. I’d probably be more likely to recommend this album to someone who’s a big fan of folk rock. That’s a style of music that nobody ever really thinks of when they think of the Floyd, but it can be seen in a lot of Roger Waters’ songwriting, particularly in this 1969-72 period, and these songs are simultaneously among the band’s prettiest and most overlooked. Although I guess that if you wrote The Wall almost singlehandedly, it’s easy to have a lot of your simpler stuff overlooked.

Pink Floyd: A Saucerful of Secrets

A Saucerful of Secrets

Best song: Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun

Worst song: See-Saw

Overall grade: 5

Nick Mason is seriously underrated. Not as a drummer, he was never that great at that, but in his importance to the band as a whole. And by that I’m not talking about the sound effects or studio work, I just mean that (as comes across in his book) he has this great easygoing nature, and I actually have this theory that if it wasn’t for him keeping the peace, the band would have split up far earlier than they eventually did – possibly even before The Wall.

But he couldn’t prevent the problems this early incarnation of the band had. This album contains the last traces of Syd Barrett’s version of the band, most notably in the disturbing standout closer ‘Jugband Blues’, which provides the missing link between Piper and The Madcap Laughs. It’s wonderfully bleak, with cryptic lyrics and simple guitar contrasted to the Salvation Army band that plays in the middle, and it always makes me cry. It could only work as the final track.

The album’s also a new beginning. Several of the tracks here feature songwriting and guitar contributions from new guitarist David Gilmour. The title track in particular is outstanding… with sections that were originally titled ‘Nick’s Boogie’ and ‘Richard’s Rave Up’ I feel like the eventual titles fit the piece a lot better. It’s weird and experimental and at times you have no idea what you’re listening to, but it’s a great early example of the Gilmour/Waters songwriting partnership bringing the band’s best work. I’m also a big fan of ‘Let There Be More Light’ which has a really memorable bassline and David Gilmour’s first-ever guitar solo with the group. And I’ve always liked the title for some reason.

 So there are great songs, but then they’re balanced out by a bit of filler, like ‘See-Saw’ – which technically has nothing wrong with it but has nothing to remember it either – and ‘Remember a Day’ which I quite enjoy, but at the same time is like a poorer version of a Syd Barrett single. I actually enjoy ‘Corporal Clegg’ as a standalone song and a kind of novelty tune (single: ‘Corporal Clegg’ by Roger Waters feat. Nick Mason on kazoo) but it definitely don’t fit in with the early-space-rock theme of the album.

I think it’s fitting that ‘Set the Controls…’ is the best track on here, considering it’s rumoured that all five members play on it, making it unique in the Floyd catalogue. It’s very quiet, nothing like the noisy freak-out of the title track, and its sinister atmosphere that’s mostly down to Rick Wright’s organ work and whispered lyrics make it into a classic. One of the few early Floyd songs where the studio version almost equals the live version.

Considering that this album should feel like the disjointed ramblings of a band with no idea what direction they’re going in, I think the fairly minor drop in quality between Piper and this is a remarkable feat, and if they had kept up the greatness of the good tracks for the whole album, I would have had no problem giving Saucerful a 7 too.

Pink Floyd: The Piper at the Gates of Dawn

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn

Best song: Interstellar Overdrive

Worst song: Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk

Overall grade: 7

Syd Barrett writing songs, back when he was very weird, but it wasn’t yet the disturbing kind of weird that made you realise his mental state was completely beyond repair. No, on Piper, I actually wouldn’t object to being inside the mind that came up with this.

At this point in Pink Floyd’s history, they were playing live shows pretty much every night, and these consisted mainly of long, instrumental, acid-rock jams, and this side of the band is represented in the group compositions; the best of these being Interstellar Overdrive – a brilliant headphones song that rivals the Grateful Dead and Hawkwind in making you feel like you’re taking an acid trip in outer space. The others in this style, Astronomy Domine and Pow R Toc H. are both excellent too, already hinting at the band’s later fascination with studio effects and gimmicks.

But the album is also packed with songs that show a side of the band you couldn’t find by going to their live shows – the three-minute psychedelic pop tracks, almost any of which could have been singles. My favourite of these is Lucifer Sam when taken overall – it’s a really cool bass-driven song with a great vocal hook and some funky instrument noises scattered through it. When looking at the lyrics, though, Flaming is the best; a tale of two kids playing hide and seek with some great imagery (Watching buttercups cup the light/Sleeping on a dandelion) and the classic childlike squeal of ‘Yippee! You can’t see me but I can you.’

The Barrett composition on here that most people bash is side 2’s Chapter 24, and while not as strong as many of the other songs, I really like the hypnotic quality of Syd’s voice – he’s almost detached as he recites the lyrics, which is appropriate considering they weren’t written by him but instead taken from the I-Ching (Chinese Book of Changes).

However, the other song that everyone complains about is the side one closer and sole Roger Waters composition, ‘Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk’, and that one’s justified. The lyrics are by far the worst he would ever write, and I can’t even remember the tune despite listening to it yesterday (does it even have one?)

The album finishes with ‘Bike’, which despite what some people say, is NOT a novelty song – come on, Syd Barrett was taking several tabs of LSD every day, I’m pretty sure that’s just what was in his head, including the minute-long sound collage at the end. The strange children’s-toy noises that make up this really sum up the mood of the whole album – fun and childlike on the surface, but with a lot of dark, spooky undertones.

Overall, I really consider this the first Floyd masterpiece, and on some days even the finest. On the later 70s albums, yes, the standard was ridiculously high, but everything was meticulously crafted – planned to create exactly the effect they wanted, while on here, everything’s so spontaneous. The Floyd were just trying to write regular songs, and they turned out this mind-blowing, and that’s really why giving a grade of 7 is such an obvious decision.