This was David Gilmour's first solo album - the first of only three so far. Here he reunited with drummer Willie Wilson and bassist Rick Willis from his pre-Pink Floyd group Joker's Wild.
The fact that the performing trio knew each other so well is quite evident, as the album has a warm, homely feel, quite different from the increasingly paranoid and cold musical direction in which Pink Floyd were heading at the time with Animals and The Wall. You can tell these were just three friends getting together to jam some spacey blues ballads in a comfortable invironment.
That's the main reason I always preferred Gilmour over Roger Waters. The latter became from about Dark Side Of The Moon onwards more and more obsessed with trying to dig at the core of humanity, his writings often stemming from philosophies regarding what it means to be a man, why we do the things we do, why we treat each other the way we do, what it all means and what it all leads to. Which was fine, but with The Wall, possibly the most overrated album of all time, the scale tipped over and the message became so overpowering it actually hurt the music. Don't me started on Waters' post-Floyd solo albums, as I find them practically unlistenable for these very reasons.
No surprise that Gilmour, who always felt the music should come first and the message second, wrote or co-wrote the best songs on The Wall. Songs such as Goodbye Blue Sky, Hey You, Another Brick in the Wall: Part 2 and Comfortably Numb. The latter was actually written for this album, but not included. Come to think of it, Dogs was by far the best song on Animals and it was the only song on there co-written by (yep, you guessed it) David Gilmour.
With that in mind, it makes even more sense this album sounds the way it does. This must have been like a relaxing retreat for Gilmour, to get to go to France with some old chums and make a album with the music up front, full of lush melodies and without having to deal with politics and heavy-handed preachings.
(mp3) David Gilmour - There's no way out of there (recommended!)
(mp3) David Gilmour - So far away
(mp3) David Gilmour - No way
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5 comments:
I always preferred Gilmour over Waters, too.
By the way, what do you think about the Floyd-Gilmour albums, such as "The Division Bell" and "A momentary lapse of reason"? I think, for example, that "The Division Bell" is much better than "The Final Cut".
I prefer TDB over AMLOR, but the latter ain't too bad.
On An Island smokes both of 'em though.
Yep. I jumped off the Floyd bandwagon when The Wall came out.
And the Gilmore tunes were always my faves.
Besides good old Syd, of course.
Word.
This is great. I admit to being infatuated (to a degree) with The Wall in HS. The realization that The Wall destroyed Pink Floyd came a year or so ago when I watched the most depressing and painful concert clip on youtube from one of their wall gigs. The whole thing was so ridiculous. Waters was up there with a huge set of headphones around his head, while a bunch of exceptionally dumb, over-sized marionettes were lifted slowly into the air and moved lugubriously from side to side. It was all so self-gratifying. Totally dead. Gilmour and everyone else confined to roles. Such a shame. In a way, the wall was the worse thing to happen to floyd.
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