Pink Floyd: The Endless River

I want to tell you that this is a classic Pink Floyd record. I want to say that this album stands next to undisputed classics like "Dark Side of the Moon," "Wish You Were Here," and "The Wall." I want to say those things and I want them to be true, because I love Pink Floyd. Their music has been with me for a long time. The thing is, I would've have been very surprised if Floyd's latest album, their first in twenty years, "The Endless River," was on par with those classics. How could it be? This album was cobbled together from unused takes recorded during the making of "The Division Bell." This is something that David Gilmour and Nick Mason made clear in promotional interviews for the record.

So far reviews for "The Endless River," have not been favorable with "The Independent" calling it "boring and desperately disappointing." I'm not entirely sure what such reviewers were expecting. I've been looking forward to this album from the time the news of it's existence was leaked, but even I knew that it wasn't going to be anything revolutionary. These are twenty year old left overs revisited and reedited into an album of "new" music. By this point I am hoping that I given you more realistic expectations of what you are getting when you listen to the album.

When the record came in the mail today it was nice to open the box and to see a beautifully packaged album. Pink Floyd has always had visually striking and surreal album art and "The Endless River" is no exception. It was nice to give the record a spin and to hear the familiar sounds of the late Rick Wright's long sustained keyboard notes and David Gilmour's reverb heavy guitars. While much of Floyd's music, especially during the Roger Waters led era, dealt with dark subject matter, the music has always had a mellow warmth that invited listeners to sit back and trip out, with or without mind altering psychedelics. Most of the time I prefer my rock n roll to be raw and unpolished, but its hard to argue against the always immaculate sound quality of Pink Floyd albums. In terms of pure sound "The Endless River," lives up to the high standard of its predecessors. Great artwork? Check. Great sound quality? Check. Great songs? Well....its complicated.

Pink Floyd, with the exception of "Money" and "Another Brick In the Wall," have never been known for producing chart topping hook filled singles. Pink Floyd was always about full album statements. That being said, "The Endless River," is particularly void of hooks and with the exception of the album closer "Louder Than Words," it rarely contains anything that could be called a song at all. However, it must be remembered that this album was advertised and promoted as mostly instrumental and ambient. To call this an album of eighteen new Pink Floyd songs is misleading. In actuality this is a collection of eighteen mostly instrumental snippets strung together into four longer pieces each occupying one side of the two record set.

While the music can feel directionless and incomplete, and some of it borders dangerously close to "Pure Moodsesque" New Age music, much of what's here is engaging and at times it gets frustratingly close to classic Floyd without quite reaching it. However "frustratingly close to classic Floyd," is still pretty damn good by any standard. Knowing that this album is made up of recordings that led to the hardly classic but still underrated "Division Bell," album makes it hard to not notice some repetition of notes here and there, but still this is an overall worthwhile 53 minutes if you are a Pink Floyd fan. This is not an album to convert new fans. This album has two main purposes for existing. One purpose is to give longtime Floyd fans some closure on the Pink Floyd legacy. The second and most important purpose is for the music to act as a tribute to the under appreciated keyboard work of Rick Wright who died back in 2008. On the best Pink Floyd recordings Wright's keyboards were the melancholy canvas on which Roger Water painted his words of youthful disillusionment and alienation. Wright's textures were a perfect compliment to David Gilmour's epic liquid reverbed guitar playing. Of particular note is Rick Wright's majestic playing of the Royal Albert Hall pipe organ found on the album's third side track "Autumn '68," which is a reference to not only when the piece was recorded, but to the Wright composed and forgotten pysch-pop gem "Summer '68" from "Atom Heart Mother."

So while "The Endless River" album will not be regarded as an all time classic in the annals of rock history, it does accomplish its purpose of being a nice gift and final statement from a great band that has connected with millions of fans worldwide for nearly five decades. Now before wrapping up my review what about that one song with vocals that closes the album? The name of that song is called "Louder then Words." I've always loved David Gilmour's singing voice and his performance on this track does not disappoint, nor does the sentiment of the song which is a statement about the complicated relationships that gave Pink Floyd's music that extra human element. However, its hard to forgive that cheesy opening line, "We bitch and we fight, diss each other on sight..." There is something hopelessly square about a sixty eight year old man using the word "diss," but then again even when they were cool, Pink Floyd were always were kinda square. Its part of what we love about them.