...And yet Pink Floyd, surprisingly, have never been a band that I've really liked. Don't get me wrong, I never hated Pink Floyd, but I was more fond of punk and simpler styles of music as a kid, so progressive music and me have always been more like that weird neighbour you have who you never speak to, but keep hearing about in passing: you know that they're well liked and keep meaning to give them a chance, but you still know that you're not likely to get along, so you don't give them a shot. While I will admit that progressive music has SLOWLY been gaining some interest from me in recent times (Queensryche, Crimson Glory, Seventh Wonder, Kansas and Rush have been making their way up my list of favourite bands in the last year or two), Pink Floyd simply have never gained my interest before now.
So, why am I looking at this, their long awaited fifteenth studio album? Two reasons: one, my mum's a Pink Floyd fan and I figured she would want to get the album anyway, so I got it to stop her from complaining about how much music I get and two, I've been checking out a few of their songs like "Pigs On The Wing (Part 1)" and found them at least enjoyable, so I figured it would be worth taking the plunge into a full on album by them, and where better to start than with the album that the band themselves seem convinced will be their last one?
...Stop typing that message calling me an idiot, I know it's dumb logic as well!
Anyway, this is going to be an interesting album to review for several reasons. Not only am I coming to this album as a relative outsider to the band's music, but I also have little knowledge or interest in ambient music, which is what this album is mostly made up from. Since this is also somewhat new territory for the band as well, this means that I not only have to review an album that many would have a valid reason to say is one which I am unqualified to give an opinion upon, but it is also one which is breaking new ground for the band in question.
...This could well be the worst review I've done to date, bearing that in mind. Ah well, I'm nothing if not a brave fool, so let's do this!
Anyway, let us start with the cover art for this album. It's...well, really plain, in all honesty. I don't think that's a bad thing, but it leaves me asking a lot of questions like "who's the guy on the gondolier?" and "Why is there a boat travelling across clouds?", none of which, admittedly, are essential questions! I guess one could say that the idea is based upon the imagery of the River Styx combined with the typical image of heaven being a bunch of clouds and the man is presumably meant to be Rick Wright sailing over the clouds, but I'm not sure how accurate that would all be. It's possible I'm over-thinking it a bit. Anyway, the idea is certainly interesting, I just think it feels like it's lacking something.
Now, before I start, I'm going to discuss the box the album comes in, as I got the CD and DVD two disc set. You can confidently skip the next two paragraphs if you just want information about the album, but I feel that I should review the set.
The outside of the set is a fairly large white box (about the same size as the set that Kamelot did for Silverthorn) with the cover art on the front and, on the back, the track listing on the album, as well as the full contents of the set. I do find it a bit odd that the track listing of the album is noted down as four sides in the same fashion as a vinyl record, considering this is the CD version of the set, but I imagine vinyl fans will get a kick out of it, so take that complaint with a pinch of salt.
The contents of the set is comprised of several things which will be of interest to most Pink Floyd fans. There is a small 40 page book that mostly is made up of photos of the band, presumably during the original recording sessions for the album in the 90's due to Rick Wright being present in most of the photos. I imagine that fans of Pink Floyd will find this great to look through, but none of the photos have captions, so, for a person like me who isn't familiar with the band, it's not going to be much help at all. It also makes it hard to confirm when the photos were taken, so having a larger book with some information related to the photos would have probably been the better idea. The book also includes the details of the songwriting credits and all of the other stuff you'd expect to see in the liner notes of the album. Also included in the box (aside from the DVD and CD themselves, but I'm getting to them) are three postcards with interesting designs. I don't get why they're described as being for collectors, as it's not like they're rare or anything like that, but, for what it's worth, the designs on them are very enjoyable. One of them is an image of two members of the band (presumably David Gilmour and Nick Mason), one of them is a shadow of the statue from the cover of The Division Bell and the final one is one of those weird ones where, if you move the postcard, it changes what is on it. While I doubt most people who buy the set are likely to ever use the postcards as postcards, they're certainly a very nice addition to the set. Finally, we get to the CD and DVD. It is the way that the CD and DVD have been provided in the set that I have to make my biggest complaints, as they're provided in cardboard sleeves. For a set like this, I feel that this is maybe a bit cheaply done, as they don't really provide much protection for the CD and DVD and don't really give the feeling of a set made with proper care and attention to making it a high quality set. I'm not necessarily demanding that they be done in digipack forms, but a more secure way to store the CD and DVD would have been a better idea for a set like this, as even recessing their container into the set doesn't necessarily make them more secure. So, as an overall set, it's actually not too bad, I just think that there are a few things that a bit more care and attention to detail should have picked up upon and improved for the sake of making a set worthy of mention in and of itself.
Well, now I've got my gripes out about the set itself (and, no doubt, proven myself to be the TotalBiscuit of music reviews...), let's start with the material on the album! I'm not going to review the DVD, as I imagine most people aren't interested in that much, so consider this a review of the CD only from this point onwards!
With the exception of the final track ("Louder Than Words"), the whole album is instrumental, which places the emphasis on the band's music in a very interesting way that I'm not sure the band have done before now (or, at least, not for the majority of an album!). Now, the problem with instrumental music is that it's very tough to do it right, which is why most bands tend to avoid writing them simply because they're actually far harder to write than you'd think: you have to make the music interesting, but make it able to avoid sounding like a song. This means avoiding common music structures that you hear in songs (you know, the verse-chorus pattern) and often writing the music to be memorable in ways which do not sound so melodic that people can picture it as a song (which may well require writing with an almost progressive viewpoint on the structure of the music and, as such, will require not writing anything that repeats enough to count as a chorus). That's a surprisingly tough thing to get right, even if you're doing stuff with an emphasis on atmosphere like ambient music, and even a skilled musician is going to struggle to write an instrumental properly, ESPECIALLY if they're used to writing songs.
Pink Floyd seem to get around this simply through not having a structure to ANY of the music on the album. The end result feels more than a bit like a long jam session than anything else, which is perfectly fine if you like that kind of thing, but I personally just found it somewhat dull. In fact, I found myself yawning while listening to the album whenever I tried to listen to it more than once in one sitting. Granted, the ambient style of music is generally a style which implies a heavy amount of atmosphere and a soothing sound to it, so you could argue that the band pulled the style off perfectly by making me start to feel sleepy while listening to the album, but I'm not sure that the band aimed for the album to be a cure for insomnia! It's all incredibly pleasant, but I feel that it mostly lacks anything of real interest to make it become actually memorable. There are various moments which are certainly interesting, but they don't stand out enough to prevent the whole album from blending together and becoming a bit of a bore, if I'm totally honest. Again, I'm not really knowledgeable about ambient music and Pink Floyd were never a band who I held to be among the bands that I felt I had to listen to, so this could all be me speaking from a lack of experience, but the whole album feels like it's trying to do something which it simply can't deliver on. I've read some other reviews which indicate that there are quite a few hints towards earlier songs in Pink Floyd's history, but I honestly couldn't pick them up at all! For most of this album, the album simply goes in one ear and out of the other, leaving no real impression upon you. Even repeated listens don't help it to improve the songs memorability: most of them simply don't improve much with repeated listens. It's hardly bad, but I think most people would be forgiven for losing interest very quickly while listening to the album, as there's just not a lot that's really going to stand out to most people.
The performances, luckily, are still incredibly good! While I don't think the music is really that memorable, it's certainly very well performed and I imagine that hardcore Pink Floyd fans will be pleased with the performances on the record. The only performance that I think will be questionable is Gilmore's vocals (and the lyrics to the same song, come to think of it) on "Louder Than Words", as his voice is...I hesitate to say that his vocals are band, but they're certainly not that great. I think the true star of the album, though, is Rick Wright. Now, this is going to sound odd if you've not heard the album, but Wright manages to support the music on the album perfectly while still managing to stand out in his own very interesting way. As a tribute to the guy, this album's only flaw in the lack of memorability: I otherwise feel that this is an album which truly highlights the ability of the late musician and makes his contributions to the band heard in a way which cannot be missed!
The production on this album is really great: it's got dynamics, it's got audible bass, all of the instruments are placed great in the mix...no complaints at all! I'd really love to hear more albums with production like this, as it's just great to hear an album with this type of production.
So, overall, what do I think of this album? Well, it's just...there. I wouldn't call it a terrible album by any measure and, with this being so far out of my comfort zone, I accept that my opinion on this album is going to be useless to most people (and, in fact, I would really encourage you to take my review on this album as just a bemused outsider's opinion on the album instead of that of a real critic), but I ultimately don't see this being an album that most people are going to want to listen to. If you're a hardcore Pink Floyd fan and like ambient music, then this will almost certainly be a treat, but, for everyone else, this is probably not worth picking up, as it's not what Pink Floyd fans will be looking for and will leave people who aren't Pink Floyd fans even more confused as to what the big deal about the band is.
I normally would provide a rating on this album, but I feel that I cannot provide one and be sure that I've fairly managed to represent the album within the style of music it is in, so I shall not include an official one for this review. I personally would like to represent the album with a score of a 4 out of 10, but I'm strictly running by what I'm used to and am not able to compare it to similar albums, so consider the importance of the actual words of this review to help you to make a decision as to whether to purchase this album (if you haven't got it already: this WAS the most pre-ordered album in Amazon UK's history!) and make your decision based upon that instead of my unofficial score.
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