Pink Floyd

The Best Of Pink Floyd

missing a few songs, but very good

Review Score:

(8/10)
Echoes is a compilation that attempts to span a career that is difficult to summarise succinctly. British band Pink Floyd is an entity not unlike fellow rock time-travellers Fleetwood Mac or Yes in that it has been around since the heyday of British psychedelia in the late 60's ,has had several lead vocalists, many changes in artistic style, and many different eras. Today, Pink Floyd appears to be a defunct band, but it enjoys a vast legacy of lifelong fans with fond memories, critical acclaim and a back catalogue that continues to win new fans amongst today's generation.

The result is a disparate collection of best tracks. Some of this is magnificent and unforgettable musical magic, while some is not that wonderful. But if you know the Pink Floyd story , it all makes sense.

The early stuff from the Syd Barrett era (circa 1966-68) was new to me when I bought my copy of Echoes in 2002. I don't care for this music much, but then I wasn't around in the late 60's, at which time it may well have found favour with the avant garde/ chemically-enhanced set that were in vogue at the time. So I'm not the best judge. See Emily Play is OK , and was a 1967 UK hit at a time when Pink Floyd was a somewhat trippy art-pop group in London.

The next era of Pink Floyd featured more experimental stuff, which was taken from a bunch of early 70's albums. Echoes is a multi-themes epic that here is cut down to 16 minutes. It's really good. One Of These Days is a groovy instrumental that shows the band learning a few studio tricks. By now, the creative core of bass guitar player / songwriter Roger Waters and guitar player / singer David Gilmour had assumed co-control of the band, along with Richard Wright on keyboards, and drummer Nick Mason.

Pink Floyd however remained on the fringes of popular recognition with their music appealing mainly to what would now be termed an "indie" audience of rock listeners in the early 70's and their songs bypassing radio as they refused to issue radio-friendly cuts.

In 1973 , this changed irrevocably with their undisputed masterwork Dark Side Of The Moon. This is a touchstone of our collective popular culture, as its themes of time, money, death, madness and conflict are universal, and their realisation as classic songs has seen this become an all-time favourite album of millions of people. Us And Them is magnificent songcraft with soft verses and loud choruses, and deals with fighting. Time hits the mark exactly with its commentary on the modern rush of progress leaving us all "hanging on in quiet desperation" , while Money tackles the other side of the equation with its biting lyrics exposing the greed that drives our overconsumptive society.

The Wish You Were Here album of 1975 was dominated by the title tune - another melodic classic with great lyrics by Waters. Shine On You Crazy Diamond appears here as an epic 7-part piece. It's about the psychosis of their former bandmate Syd Barrett.

Animals (1977) is represented by the 9-minute track Sheep, which is not a favourite of mine, but which I know many other reviewers like. Pink Floyd had become giant-sized stadium concept rockers by this time, and alienation, excess, and fame pressures took an emotional toll on Roger Waters (and presumably the others too). Waters made up the idea for The Wall (1979) - an ambitious psychodrama that Pink Floyd did as a double album of closely-linked songs, that became a vast touring show in 1980 and an unsettling, vivid feature film in 1982. The Wall has some awesome songs on it, along with the sort of narrative song-fragments that link together musicals and operatic projects. This set excerpts their best track Comfortably Numb - an amazing performance on guitar by Gilmour and shared vocals with Gilmour and Waters makes this tale of mental disturbance/delirium mixed with reverie perhaps the defining Pink Floyd song for me. The anti-authoritarian chant of Another Brick In The Wall (part 2) demanded single release in 1979 and reached #1 on the pop charts. It appears here with the prologue Happiest Days Of Our Lives (not!!), while the minor-key song Hey You wonderfully conveyed feelings of isolation and disconnection from the world.

Roger Waters contributed the autobiographical piece When The Tigers Broke Free (about his father) and the satirical The Fletcher Memorial Home before departing in acrimony after 1983's The Final Cut album and taking with him the vein of misanthropy that had begun to creep into their last two studio projects.

David Gilmour thus assumed creative control, and from then on we have tracks from 1987's A Momentary Lapse Of Reason and 1994's The Division Bell. I do like High Hopes, which is ominous, sad and rather beautiful , and Learning To Fly - a rock radio hit. These latter-day records are sonically grand and of high quality , but again represent a distinctively-different era of the band, with Gilmour singing almost every song. My favourite song from this era is the beautiful humanitarian ballad On The Turning Away (1987), but it's not on this set.

An uneven set then , but unquestionably brilliant at times, thought-provoking and intelligent rock music. It's the best thing to buy if you want an overview of all Pink Floyd's best-known pieces.

Highly Recommended!!

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