Pink Floyd
The Endless River
Parlophone UK
2014
Oh the Irony… any old Irony. Some twenty years after their latest album, Pink Floyd, return, to put an epilogue to their career, with what were actually the leftovers of 1994s “The Division Bell”. Edited by no less than four producers and David Gilmour himself and including a host of different contributing musicians, the material found here, is based around music predominantly recorded during “The Division Bell” and an hour long ambient composition that Andy Jackson, Pink Floyd’s engineer had worked on, (trimming it down from some 4 DATs, that contained approximately six hours of music) and turned into “Big Spliff”. 20 hours of loose jams were scanned and later had parts added, re-recorder and rearranged, with the aid of Phil Manzanera who had aided, Gilmour on his solo album “On an Island” and later on all reconvened with Youth, Andy Jackson and Damon Iddins and a host of other musicians, to work on 4, “sides” of material, that were later split into “songs”.
This makes this “final” album, a pretty bizarre one. Born out of a desire to salute their fallen comrade Richard Wright, one of the band’s founding members, who did sub come to some undisclosed form of cancer in 2008, rather than the desire to artistically express themselves through the Pink Floyd vehicle, it’s largely instrumental nature, is simply tiresome. It’s true, that some of the early and brilliant Pink Floyd albums were also largely instrumental, but this is more like a culmination of decent ideas, with Wright playing on them. Had the band worked on actually composing music for this, who knows... but with actually enveloping themselves in this weird template, the result is at best awkward. It bears a lot of the trademarks that would make you identify it as Pink Floyd, but I’d definitely refrain from considering it one of the bands most inspired moments.
Most of the compositions are based around really spatial notes, seemingly sustained forever and the ambiance and atmosphere created around them. Some are longer while some are shorter... For instance the opener “Things Left Unsaid” on Side One, weighs in at almost four and a half minutes and has some really semi-unintelligible speech, going on before, it really ambiently flows for the remaining three minutes... “It’s what we do” must have not been much different to begin with, but has Gilmour’s signature sustained guitar playing, that gives it that “Pink Floyd” character and as soon as the keyboards come looming in it sounds like something that could have been a “Division Bell” leftover... “Ebb And Flow” at merely under two minutes, is mostly based around some delicate improv and is interesting, but by no means a full composition and that's a problem with a lot of the “songs” here... they are pretty “fragments”.
Side Two begins with “Sum” which is a longer number, but it’s very monotonous, again, it tries to work in a neat wright motif, that you’ll instantly identify from the past, while the closing “part” is also interesting… a lot of smaller compositions follow, like the highly percussive “Skins” that also has an ambient ending, followed by the minute long “Unsung” that manages to encompass a lot of “drama” in its short duration and sound like an ideal intro to the very melodic and almost blissful “Anisina” with it’s nice tenor sax and clarinet, elevating it to ethereal realms... (somewhere on a journey towards the heart of the sun, where the controls might be set and locked to...)
Side Three, begins with the deeply melancholic “The Lost Art of Conversation”... in less than two minutes this piano based piece, that is almost as blue and bleak as Satie’s Gymnopaidies manages to bring you down, considerably, before the mild guitar noodling of “On Noodle Street” (pun intended) gets you, back to the surface. “Night Light” is another exercise in creating a hopeless and dump almost claustrophobic atmosphere, just based around a couple guitar sounds and is almost a perfect springboard for the aural assault of “Allons-Y (1)” that recycles, some older Floyd riff and just improves all over it, creating a sweet feeling of nostalgia. What better introduction then for “Autumn 68” a solo of Wright playing the Pipe organ at the Royal Alber Hall, in 69 of all years! Truly a haunting melody that is here really masterfully inserted, between the two parts of “Allons-Y”, as “Allons-Y (2)” seamlessly segues again treading familiar territory to finish this small suite with a celebratory “bang”. “Talkin’Hawkin” is I suppose the one other track, other than “Louder than Words” to feature vocals.
Those home in the form of some harmonic “ah’s” by Gilmour and a bit of synthesized speech by the great cosmologist and physicist, Professor Stephen Hawking. Interesting.
On Side Four we’ve got the mysterious and somber sounding “Calling” based on some dark keyboard textures, giving way to the shorter, equally stirring but somewhat less threatening “Eyes to Pearls”. “Surfacing” lifts all the shadows that might remain and adds a lot of harmonic “ah’s” and “ooooh’s”... before we arrive at the end of our course, our destination, the only “song” of the endless river, that hauntingly also begins with the sound of tolling bells, very much like “High Hopes”... “Louder than Words” that had the lyrics apparently by Gilmour’s wife Polly Samson, seems to be a bit of an afterthought… it’s a nice song... and maybe a fitting epilogue... who knows… when you reach “The End”… you never can tell, it’s uneasy to look back and review the past, pointless even, so this poignant song just expresses that…
It’s just sad, that when you decide to finish something you don’t let old grudges go… even though in a way you maybe have done…
This makes this “final” album, a pretty bizarre one. Born out of a desire to salute their fallen comrade Richard Wright, one of the band’s founding members, who did sub come to some undisclosed form of cancer in 2008, rather than the desire to artistically express themselves through the Pink Floyd vehicle, it’s largely instrumental nature, is simply tiresome. It’s true, that some of the early and brilliant Pink Floyd albums were also largely instrumental, but this is more like a culmination of decent ideas, with Wright playing on them. Had the band worked on actually composing music for this, who knows... but with actually enveloping themselves in this weird template, the result is at best awkward. It bears a lot of the trademarks that would make you identify it as Pink Floyd, but I’d definitely refrain from considering it one of the bands most inspired moments.
Most of the compositions are based around really spatial notes, seemingly sustained forever and the ambiance and atmosphere created around them. Some are longer while some are shorter... For instance the opener “Things Left Unsaid” on Side One, weighs in at almost four and a half minutes and has some really semi-unintelligible speech, going on before, it really ambiently flows for the remaining three minutes... “It’s what we do” must have not been much different to begin with, but has Gilmour’s signature sustained guitar playing, that gives it that “Pink Floyd” character and as soon as the keyboards come looming in it sounds like something that could have been a “Division Bell” leftover... “Ebb And Flow” at merely under two minutes, is mostly based around some delicate improv and is interesting, but by no means a full composition and that's a problem with a lot of the “songs” here... they are pretty “fragments”.
Side Two begins with “Sum” which is a longer number, but it’s very monotonous, again, it tries to work in a neat wright motif, that you’ll instantly identify from the past, while the closing “part” is also interesting… a lot of smaller compositions follow, like the highly percussive “Skins” that also has an ambient ending, followed by the minute long “Unsung” that manages to encompass a lot of “drama” in its short duration and sound like an ideal intro to the very melodic and almost blissful “Anisina” with it’s nice tenor sax and clarinet, elevating it to ethereal realms... (somewhere on a journey towards the heart of the sun, where the controls might be set and locked to...)
Side Three, begins with the deeply melancholic “The Lost Art of Conversation”... in less than two minutes this piano based piece, that is almost as blue and bleak as Satie’s Gymnopaidies manages to bring you down, considerably, before the mild guitar noodling of “On Noodle Street” (pun intended) gets you, back to the surface. “Night Light” is another exercise in creating a hopeless and dump almost claustrophobic atmosphere, just based around a couple guitar sounds and is almost a perfect springboard for the aural assault of “Allons-Y (1)” that recycles, some older Floyd riff and just improves all over it, creating a sweet feeling of nostalgia. What better introduction then for “Autumn 68” a solo of Wright playing the Pipe organ at the Royal Alber Hall, in 69 of all years! Truly a haunting melody that is here really masterfully inserted, between the two parts of “Allons-Y”, as “Allons-Y (2)” seamlessly segues again treading familiar territory to finish this small suite with a celebratory “bang”. “Talkin’Hawkin” is I suppose the one other track, other than “Louder than Words” to feature vocals.
Those home in the form of some harmonic “ah’s” by Gilmour and a bit of synthesized speech by the great cosmologist and physicist, Professor Stephen Hawking. Interesting.
On Side Four we’ve got the mysterious and somber sounding “Calling” based on some dark keyboard textures, giving way to the shorter, equally stirring but somewhat less threatening “Eyes to Pearls”. “Surfacing” lifts all the shadows that might remain and adds a lot of harmonic “ah’s” and “ooooh’s”... before we arrive at the end of our course, our destination, the only “song” of the endless river, that hauntingly also begins with the sound of tolling bells, very much like “High Hopes”... “Louder than Words” that had the lyrics apparently by Gilmour’s wife Polly Samson, seems to be a bit of an afterthought… it’s a nice song... and maybe a fitting epilogue... who knows… when you reach “The End”… you never can tell, it’s uneasy to look back and review the past, pointless even, so this poignant song just expresses that…
It’s just sad, that when you decide to finish something you don’t let old grudges go… even though in a way you maybe have done…