Pink Floyd

The Best Of Pink Floyd

Certainly not the best of Pink Floyd, but it has its place.

Review Score:

(6/10)
Echoes: The Best Of Pink Floyd has been badly marketed since its inception. The hardcore Floydians would be dissappointed with the track selections and the lack of rarities, and new fans would probably be better served by buying the original albums.

Pink Floyd is emphatically not a compilation band. Each album is in essence a conceptual work, so taking songs out of their original context and order certainly detracts from the music. The Wall, Wish You Were Here, Animals, and to a lesser extent Dark Side Of The Moon were definitely meant to be taken as a cohesive whole, not brief snippets.

On the other hand if Gilmour was aiming for a greatest hits collection, this was not the way to do it. Where's the commercially popular tracks like Have A Cigar, Mother, On The Turning Away, and Brain Damage? And if he was aiming for a fan-friendly package, I could've done without Keep Talking, Sorrow, and The Fletcher Memorial Home. If Fearless, Dogs, and If replaced them I would've been ecstatic. When The Tigers Broke Free was a nice addition, and the singles of Arnold Layne and See Emily Play are essential for Syd Barrett fans, but somehow this compilation leaves me and other fans wanting.

Furthermore, the ... jobs done to Echoes and Marooned (a great post-Waters instrumental in its full form) are inexcusable. I wouldn't have minded paying extra for a third CD if they had gone with the full lengths of these songs and thrown in more material.

However all is not lost, for Echoes does have its merits. The way these tracks run together using ambient sound (like they often do on a Pink Floyd album) is a nice approach and almost makes it sound like a concept album in itself. I also like the way this collection starts and ends with a Syd Barrett composition. In this way, Echoes is intended to be a look at Pink Floyd's career throughout the psychedelic and whimsical Barrett period, the Gilmour and Waters heyday that the band is most remembered for, and the post-Waters incarnation of the last two decades. Most of the selections are solid, and I was surprised (in a good way) to see Set The Controls For The Heart Of Sun and Jugband Blues from the oft-overlooked Saucerful Of Secrets included here.

People new to Pink Floyd should NOT start here. Buy Dark Side Of The Moon, The Wall, Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, Wish You Were Here, and even Meddle over this. If you're a fan interested in kicking back for a couple of hours and listening to the history of Pink Floyd unfold, Echoes might be your cup of tea. But it could've been so much better...

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