@Justin I completely agree. It's a solid album and that's all that really needs to be said. No, it doesn't come close to the genius that was Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals or The Wall. If anyone was expecting it to, they should be checked into a mental institution immediately. I just listened to the album, in it's entirety again, after closing up my bar for the night...as I type this I'm listening to The Gunner's Dream from The Final Cut. Alphabetical album sorting in my media player, apparently. Anyway, Pink Floyd has gone through three major, distinct phases. The original, Syd Barrett led Floyd. The Roger Waters led Floyd. Then the David Gilmour led Floyd. We all knew this album would be made up mostly of leftover pieces tinkered with during The Division Bell recording sessions. ****, you can hear several snippets of sound on this album that are on The Division Bell!
But with Richard Wright dead, there was really only so much they could do to shape this album. I mean, they
could have had Jon Carin just completely re-do the keyboard parts or add a lot of new keyboard parts, but from what Gilmour and Mason have said, this album was really a way to showcase the talents of Richard Wright. Keyboards, piano, his Leslie are all front and center on this album. Many people are going to be upset at the lack of lyrical content. At first, I was a bit bummed too. But then I thought about it...Gilmour hates writing lyrics. Wright has passed. That means Gilmour's wife would have written 95% of the lyrics, probably, if they tried to make a traditional album. She wrote all the lyrics to "Louder Than Words", the only song that contains lyrics on this album.
I think almost everybody would agree that Roger Waters was the
lyrical genius behind Pink Floyd. I know many people who actually prefer the Gilmour-led ear of Pink Floyd, but they'll always admit that it's solely because they dig Pink Floyd's
sound rather than their messages (lyrics). Myself? I think the four albums I mentioned above are their strongest work. Musically, I think Pink Floyd was at the top of their game around 1977 during their In The Flesh tour supporting the album Animals. I would give anything to be able to go back in time and see a Pink Floyd show during 1977 - even the infamous Montreal show where Roger Waters spit on that kid in the front row and encouraged the audience to beat the **** out of him...
Well, I'm rambling as the song The Final Cut plays... Obviously, this album won't see much airplay because of the way the "songs" are represented. You really need to play an entire "side" and count that as one song, in my opinion. But I encourage everyone who even moderately likes Pink Floyd to give this album a chance. It probably won't find its way into many people's daily rotation except for the die hard Floyd fans, but I think you could easily drop one of the "sides" into a playlist and enjoy a 6-12 minute instrumental piece.
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