Pink Floyd

The Division Bell

The Ring of Truth

Review Score:

(10/10)
Where Wish you were Here was a tribute to founding member Syd Barrett, The Division Bell is an examination of the situation between Waters and the Band at the time. The two stone heads facing each other on the cover pretty much sums up the problem: both camps were being stubborn and neither were budging. However, The Band recognized that communication needed to be restored and Gilmour did attempt to restore that communication with Waters, as summarized in the final verses of the second to last song, Lost For Words. While communication is the major theme running through the record, the internal band problems are suggested through various Floydian references all throughout the album. What do you Want From Me uses some of the funk grooves from Have a Cigar, while Gilmour asks Waters clearly if he wouldn't rather just take back complete control of the band again. Poles Apart starts out being about Syd and his descent into madness while the second verse (Hey You!) addresses Waters. The interlude uses sound effects of things that rotate on an axis, except for one snippet of a plane taking off from the original Atom Heart Mother performances, and then ends with Gilmours own self doubts about where he stands in the grand scheme of Pink Floyd and realizing in the end that his own personal life and love is where he keeps his sanity grounded. Marooned is a mood piece that suggests that impasse that people reach when they can't come to a good compromise. It's both sad and angry all at once. A Great Day For Freedom talks about different occasions of breakdowns that lead to new beginnings, again with the reference to the Floyd and it's total state of chaos by the end of The Wall project (On the day the wall came down this ship of fools had finally run aground) and Waters break from contract and the legal threat with all the court paper filings (promises lit up the night like paper doves in flight.) Wearing The Inside Out is a personal aside about Wright's own exile, both physically from the band, and mentally. Take it Back uses the analogy of how Mother Nature might one day take back the earth if we continue to abuse it, with how we all fight back against personal abuses and attacks and Coming Back to Life details the struggle to rise up after all of those attacks.
Keep Talking expresses a regret for not saying something sooner before problems got out of control, whispered in an almost Waters like tone, while Lost For Words again details the battle of words and the attempt to patch things up that gets met with viscous words in return. High Hopes concludes things with a fond look back at happier days and the hope that those happier days aren't completely lost in the past.

On a side note I want to address the issue of Gilmour and the slew of writers given credit on Momentary Lapse and to some small extent on this recording. Jon Carin said in an interview that he had made a sound with the keyboard that Gilmour liked and used it in the song Learning to Fly and then gave him a writing credit for it. Gilmour spent many years helping to form a lot of Waters' work without ever getting credit, only to find that now it has come back to haunt him because it looks like Waters did everything. So Gilmour decided to be fair and just with everyone and give any input a credit to the person who provided it. But you just can't win because now he's getting damned for that too, because it makes it look like he can't write anything without a lot of help, whereas Carin made a point that 99% of the Momentary album is Gilmours own writing. Being generous is just in his nature. Waters claims to be the exact opposite of Gilmour philisophically, and it certainly seems like it.

While Waters still continues to belittle Gilmour's work in Pink Floyd, and rewrites his own history of what happened in the band (these days he's saying he was forced out of the group!), The Division Bell is musically and lyrically a poetic observation on that whole mess and the only perspective that seems to have the ring of truth about it.

More Reviews: