Man, its been a long time since I've posted on this blog. This doesn't necessarily mean that I'll be back to posting regularly, but this is something I've been wanting to do for a while. Pink Floyd is one of my favorite bands, and I've been listening to them a lot recently, so I decided to make the official, definitive list of Pink Floyd albums from best to worst. That's right, if you disagree with me you are wrong. Just kidding, but enough joking around, here it is!
 |
| One of the few photos of all members of Pink Floyd together. |
(Left to Right, Top to Bottom) Nick Mason, Syd Barret, Roger Waters, Richard Wright, David Gilmour
#1 The Wall
Yes, The Wall is my favorite Pink Floyd album, come at me Floyd purists. The Wall is one of those albums that fans like to say is bad/overrated retroactively because it got too popular, also maybe because it has a sound that is much different and more accessible than a lot of their albums. But regardless of this, I love this album, and what's not no love? It's chock-full of Floyd classics such as "The Happiest Days of Our Lives/Another Brick in the Wall Part 2," "Young Lust," "Hey You," and many more. The album has an extremely well written and somewhat relatable concept, which follows a man named Pink as he slowly isolates himself emotionally from the world around him, even as he becomes a famous musician and slowly falls deeper and deeper into loneliness and drug fueled hallucinations. This album is full of moving emotionally charged songs, instantly recognizable marches and anthems, social commentary, the interesting rolling progressive guitar and synthesizer melodies and riffs that Floyd is so good at. The Wall really has it all. You've probably heard most, if not all of the songs off of this album, but just in case you haven't, I'll pick out a few of my favorites to talk about. The album's opener, "In the Flesh?" is a great song that gives you an idea of what the rest of the album is going to sound like, and an introduction to the story that is about to be told. The song starts with a slow, lumbering guitar riff, which eventually slows down to let the protagonist, Pink, start talking. He basically says "if you you want to know who the real Pink is, and learn why I am like this, you will have to listen to this story I'm about to tell." The song plays like the introduction to a disturbing stage play, and works really well to set the tone for the rest of the album. Also there is a second song on disk 2 of this album called "In the Flesh" without the question mark which is kind of a continuation of this song. Basically, everything up till that second "In the Flesh" is Pink recalling things that happened in the past, and once you get to that song, you are back in the present. If you don't know this next song, "The Happiest Days of Our Lives/Another Brick in the Wall Part 2," you have either been living under a rock, or don't recognize the title of the song. This is the one that goes "We don't need no education, we don't need no mind control." I probably don't need to say too much about this one, but a surprisingly large number of people don't know that "Brick in the Wall 2" and "Happiest Days" are two separate songs. Also I find the lyrics "...but when they get home at night, their fat and psychopathic wives thrash them within inches of their lives" extremely funny. I'm not a sadist, those abusive teachers deserved it. There are a lot more songs I'd like to get to but I'm going to skip to some songs from disk 2 so this doesn't go too long. "Weighting For the Worms" is my favorite song off of disk 2, this song takes place at a point in the story where Pink has become a neo-nazi, and uses that to make great commentary on hate ideologies and fascism. It has almost terrifying lyrics, given from the perspective of Pink, the neo-nazi, such as "Would you like to see Britannia rule again, my friend? All you have to do is follow the worms. Would you like to send our colored cousins home again, my friend? All you have to do is follow the worms." In these lyrics, the worms are leaders and people in authority. If you want fascism, racial genocide, war, and imperialism, all you need to do is unquestioningly listen to those in authority. Perhaps a bit extreme, but perhaps not. The second to last song on this album, "The Trial" I like just because it is pretty funny, in it a judge berates Pink for not listening to people who tried to help him throughout his life. This is a great moment, because throughout the album, Pink has been using things like his overprotective mother and abusive teacher to justify shutting himself off from the world, but in this song it is relieved that it is actually Pinks own fault that he is the way he is. The teacher was more lenient on him than he wanted, but was till harsh on Pink because he was a trouble maker and pinks mother tried to support Pink as much as possible, but Pink pushed her away. The judge rules that Pink must tear down the metaphorical "wall" he built around himself, and "be exposed before [his] peers". What makes this album so good, more than anything else is this amazing writing that keeps you invested in the story being told, without taking anything away from the songs musically. There is also a movie based off of this album, of the same name, which I recommend everyone go watch. It has most of the tracks from this album, plus some extras and alternate versions. If I had to say something bad about this album, it's that it's not very representative of the majority of Pink Floyd's discography, so this might not be the best place to start if you want to really want to dive deep into Pink Floyd's discography, but it's still an amazing album that everyone can, and should, enjoy.
Notable Tracks: All of them
Rating: 10/10
#2 Animals
I feel like I'm constantly reading and hearing about how people think Animals is an underrated album, in fact I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that the album is bad, just underrated. You people realize that if everyone thinks something is underrated, it isn't underrated, it's just rated. Animals is a rated album, and its rating is "really good." Animals is another concept album, this time based off of the book "Animal Farm" by George Orwell. Animal Farm is about animals who are sick of humans being in charge of their farm, and decide that they are going to take over, and install their own, Communist, government, and run the farm themselves. Their government slowly deteriorates as they become more militant, and pigs start taking more and more power. I haven't read the book myself, I just got this from summaries, but the book is often cited as a good critique on both capitalism and Stalinism. Pink Floyd, inspired by this, used animals in this album to represent different members of society, and made commentary on each of them. Pigs represent corrupt leaders, who only care about money and their own well being; dogs represent cut throat businessmen who are willing to stab each other in the back if it means they will have enough money to support their families; sheep are the common people who listen unquestionably to the lies fed to them, and refuse to step out of line when things get bad. This album also has some of my favorite Floyd lyrics and riffs. Some of my favorite lines are: "You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to so that when they turn their backs on you, you'll get the chance to put the knife in," "Who was born in a house full of pain; who was trained not to spit in the fan; who was told what to do by the man; who was broken by trained personnel," "Hey you, White House, Ha, ha, charade you are. You house proud town mouse, Ha, ha, charade you are. You're trying to keep our feelings off the street." There are a lot more lyrics I could put here, but I don't want to bog this review down too much. In addition to this album's great lyrics, Animals is full of interesting progressive melodies, especialy in the tracks "Dogs", "Pigs (Three of Them)", and "Sheep". Animals is an amazing album, and lands a close #2 in my ranking, almost beating The Wall, but not quite.
Notable Tracks: All of them
Rating: 10/10
#3 The Dark Side of the Moon
Notable Tracks: All of them
Rating: 10/10
#4 Wish You Were Here
Wish You Were Here is an interesting album because it isn't just an album, it is also kind of a love letter to one of the band's original founding members, Syd Barret. Syd was kicked out of the band 7 years before Wish You Were Here's release, and at the time was the band's guitarist, singer, and songwriter. The band was sadly forced to kick him out after he started loosing his mind due to LSD abuse, and him sometimes refused to play at live shows. This album has 3 songs strictly about Syd (or 2 if you count the multiple part songs as 1 song), and 2 songs criticizing the music industry, which I believe they blame for causing Syd to abuse drugs and loose his mind. This is another album full of instantly recognizable, classic Pink Floyd songs such as "Shine on You Crazy Diamond" and "Wish You Were Here." The songs on this album have a kind of melancholy feel, which goes well with the album's message. The songs about the music industry also make some interesting commentary about how uncaring, and non-artistic the record labels are. One of my favorite lines off of this album is "I've always had a deep respect and I mean that most sincere; the band is just fantastic, that is really what I think, oh, by the way, which one's Pink?" The guy claims to love the band, but doesn't even realize that Pink Floyd isn't one of their names. Also it should be noted that this album was released during the peak of the band's success, so there wouldn't be an excuse for a fan of the band to not know this in this theoretical conversation. This album only has 5 tracks, and every one of them is gold.
Notable Tracks: All of them
Rating: 9.8/10
#5 A Saucerful of Secrets
We are now past what I like to call "The Big Four" of Pink Floyd. Those are four the albums that most people who say they like Pink Floyd have probably listened to. The albums lower on the list than those four get much more psychedelic, mellow, and experimental. This is also the second of the two albums with Syd Barret. Before he left the band, Syd sang, wrote, and played guitar for every song, however Syd left halfway through the recording of this album, and as a result, only wrote and sang for one of the songs, "Jugband Blues" and played guitar for that one and a few others. Despite this, he still had an obvious influence on the sound of the album. The albums with Syd stand out from the other Pink Floyd albums because they have a somewhat Beatles inspired psychedelic sound, are munch more raw sounding due to bad production quality, and have Syd's unique vocals, which unlike a lot of English singers, nicely capture his English accent.
Like I said above, one of the things that makes Syd era Floyd stand out is the Beatles influence, however one of the things that makes A Saucer Full of Secrets so good is the band's move away from these influences. This could be partially due to Syd's leaving of the band halfway through the album, and the other band members taking a larger role in its production. In their first album, they were still holding onto a lot of that more standard, and more mainstream rock sound, with vocal focused songs, and sometimes almost rock n' roll style melodies. In "A Saucer Full of Secrets" the band vastly improves upon their original sound by creating much more instrument oriented and experimental songs with grand, flowing psychedelic melodies. This change in sound can be heard in songs like "Let There be More Light" and "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" when compared to songs like "Flaming" and "The Gnome" off of their first album. Other songs on the album, like the title track, go in a more experimental direction full of interesting syncopated rhythms and improvised instruments. However, the last track on the album, "Jugband Blues," the only song actually written by Syd Barret on this album, unsurprisingly, mostly sicks to Syd Barret's standard writing style.
Notable Tracks: All of them
Rating 9.5/10
#6 Meddle
Meddle is an interesting album because it marks a transition period musically for the band. On this album they are starting to change their sound from the more mellow, psychedelic and experimental sound of their earlier albums to a more accessible, less experimental sound, like they have on their later albums. This transition can be heard clearly on the tracks "One of These Days" and parts of "Echoes," while other tracks, like "A Pillow of Winds" and "Fearless" mostly keep the sound of their earlier albums. Meddle is full of great material, and its transitional state makes it very interesting. The album starts out strong with "One of These Days," which, in my opinion, is the best instrumental that Pink Floyd ever made. The song starts with rolling bass guitar with sudden distorted synthesizer sounds, which strike through the soundscape like lightning. This is soon joined by a gritty wining guitar before everything suddenly stops except for a choppy bass guitar. It keeps going after this, but I wont describe the whole thing, you will just have to listen to it yourself. The middle of the album is mostly very mellow, but still full of interesting psycodellic melodies, like those found in "Fearless." The second to last track, "Seamus" is kind of a funny song because a dog howls along with it. A lot of people seem to not like this song, but I find it very fun, and a great addition to the album, although probably still not a favorite. The album also ends strong with "Echoes." This is generally the fan favorite song from this album. The song starts with sonar pings, but slowly transitions into a classic sounding Pink Floyd song, like something off of The Dark Side of the Moon. Throughout the rest of the song, the sound transitions from a Yes-like progy improvisational bit to a kind of spooky and bleak soundscape to more improv with winy, Floydian guitars. The song gives a fitting end to this very strange and trippy album.
Notable Tracks: "One of These Days", "A Pillow of Winds", "Fearless", "Echoes"
Rating: 9/10
#7 The Division Bell
The Division Bell stands out as Pink Floyd's mellowest album. If I were to pick one Pink Floyd album to play at my chill martini/jazz club, this would be the one. This album is full of smooth, grand songs, packed full of emotion, and amazing guitar riffs. Many of the songs on this album, like "Wearing the Inside Out" and "A Great Day for Freedom" have a smooth, but sullen, tone, while others like "Lost for Words" and "Take it Back" have more of a bittersweet feel, but every track on this album has that distant, ever present feeling of sadness, and a smooth melody to go with it. This album also shows the band learning from their mistakes on their previous two albums, The Final Cut and A Momentary Lapse of Reason, to create what is easily their best album of the post wall era. The Final Cut wasn't that good because it was lacking the hooks and catches that would make you want to listen to the songs again and it wasn't interesting or experimental like early Pink Floyd. However, it did have some of the wining guitars, and interesting synthesizer work that helped make The Wall so good. On A Momentary Lapse of Reason they made the opposite mistake and added some hooks to their songs and created much smoother, listenable, songs, but went too pop in order to appeal to a broader audience. As a result, a lot of the songs were kind of generic and comparable to more mainstream, pop bands of the time like U2. On The Division Bell, Pink Floyd took the best aspects of both of these albums; the smooth melodies and hooks from A Momentary Lapse of Reason, and the wining guitars and synths from The Final Cut; increased them tenfold, and created eleven great songs, especially for this late in their career.
Notable Tracks: "What do You Want From Me", "Poles Apart", "Wearing the Inside Out", "Take it Back", "Coming Back to Life", "Lost for Words"
Rating 8.5/10
#8 Atom Heart Mother
I've always been very fond of Atom Heart Mother, and consider it to be one of Pink Floyd's most underrated albums. This album is basically what The Division Bell would be if it wasn't as mellow and a lot weirder. This is also the first of Pink Floyd's five song albums, the others being Wish You Were Here and Animals. I tend to like these albums because they are able to tell stories more efficiently, hold an atmosphere easier, and just feel more succinct in general. This is because with less songs, these albums have less ideas they have to pull together, and become easier to listen to as a result. However, a short track list means the songs have to be longer in order to keep up the play time. This is often done by creating suites, or long songs with multiple ordered parts. This album has two suits, "Atom Heart Mother" and "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast." The obvious high point of this album is the title track, "Atom Heart Mother." This song is mostly instrumental and full of grand trumpet melodies, singing choirs, and mellow, winy guitars; similar to those off of The Division Bell. "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast" is a very interesting track. I like Irving Tan of Sputnik Music's description of it in his review where he said it was more of a "psychedelic sketch" than a song. Even though I'd still call the track a song, this kind of shows what this like. The song is basically someone, presumably Alan, preparing and eating breakfast with light guitars and piano playing in the foreground. I know this doesn't sound that good, but it actually creates a really nice atmosphere. I think what really makes this song so effective is it creates a familiar atmosphere with upbeat music in order to make the listener feel as safe as possible. This results in an extremely calming and relaxing song. I actually sometimes listen to it when I'm feeling stressed to calm myself down, and it works really well! The last important song on this album is "If". It is a quiet and charming song about someone who is falling in love with a friend. I don't have much to say about it, but its a beautiful song and a good addition to the album. The renaming two songs are what bring this album down on the list. "Summer '68" is kind of goofy and doesn't really feel like it belongs on this otherwise down to earth album. It almost sounds like it should be a b-side off of a Beatles single. "Fat Old Sun" isn't particularly bad, but it's a bit boring, and drags the rest of the album down a bit.
Notable Tracks: "Atom Heart Mother", "If", "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast"
Rating: 7.5
#9 The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
Here it is, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, the album that started it all. Pink Floyd's first album is also their only complete Sid Barret album. Syd Barret's musical style takes a much different approach to make a psychedelic sound than the rest of the band's discography. Instead of crating flowing psychedelic soundscapes like Floyd commonly did after his departure, Syd instead takes inspiration from The Beatles, making songs with unusual vocals in the foreground and less emphasis put on the instrumentation, which is mostly there to add sound effects, or complement the vocals. This is not to say Syd didn't only focus on vocals, he also has some experimental instrumentals, which lay the groundwork for Floyd's experimental pieces later in their career. This can be seen on the tracks "Pow R. Toc H.", "Take up Thy Stethoscope and Walk", and "Interstellar Overdrive". On these tracks, the band does a lot of experimentation and improvisation with minimal vocals besides sound effects and short singing sections. A lot of the songs on this album have a kind of unreal, uneasy, dreamy feel to them, almost as if this isn't real music, but instead something my brain created for me to listen to while in a dream. This atmosphere is complemented by the songs' strange, fantasy related lyrics, and bad recording quality. It is also worth mentioning that the progressive thrash metal band, Voivod, did a good cover of one of my favorite songs off of this album, "Astronomy Domine" (Listen to the Voivod cover here). They do a good job of transforming the song into a metal song, and it is on of my favorite songs by that band. Their version makes the song much more dark and sinister sounding, and is much less psychedelic than the original. To be honest, I've never been a huge fan of Syd Era Floyd, which is why this album appears so low on this list. Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike this album, but I find a lot of Syd's songs to be a bit boring, and I generally prefer the grand instrumentals in later Floyd albums. Overall, this is still a good album, and stands as a great starting point for one of the greatest bands ever created.
Notable tracks: "Astronomy Domine", "Lucifer Sam", "Matilda Mother", "Take up Thy Stethoscope and Walk", "The Gnome"
Rating: 7.5/10
#10 Obscured By Clouds
Obscured by Clouds is an album that has a bit of a special place in my heart. This was the first Pink Floyd album that I actually sat down and listened to. Sure, I had heard plenty of Pink Floyd songs from The Wall and Dark Side of the Moon, and sometimes a hit song from one of their other albums, but I never really listened to one of their albums seriously before that point. I first listened to this album after I was awarded Volume 6 of The Early Years 1965-1972 box set: Obfusc/ation for doing karaoke at a yearly festival where I live. It was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life, but it was totally worth it, and I did it again the next year. Obfusc/ation included a 2016 remix of Obscured by Clouds, which I listened to many, many times. Eventually, I stopped listening to the album after I made the mistake of setting "Mudmen" as my alarm clock sound. Let me tell you, there is no way to make yourself sick of a song faster than to set it as your alarm to wake up.
This was the album that Pink Floyd released before The Dark Side of the Moon, and the elements that made that album, and the ones after it good, first started showing up in this album. Sure, Meddle started going in that direction with "One of These Days" and "Echos," but that album was still full of the experimentation of the early albums. Obscured by Clouds has very little experimentation, and is full of the wining guitars, and slightly more mainstream sounds of later Pink Floyd. However, a downside of this change is less interesting songs. With less experimentation, the band is taking less risks, and instead give us an album full of relatively short and sleepy melodies. Overall, this album doesn't really stand out as particularly bad or good, but it is a pleasant listen, and still has a few good, memorable moments.
Random fun fact about this album: this is a soundtrack album and was originally supposed to be named after the movie they made the music for, La Vallée, but Pink Floyd had a disagreement with the film company and renamed the album to Obscured by Clouds in retaliation. Realizing the film would get no recognition without Pink Floyd's promotion, the movie was renamed to La Vallée
(Obscured by Clouds).
Notable Tracks: "Obscured by Clouds", "The Gold It's in The...", "Wot's... Uh the Deal", "Childhood's End"
Rating: 6/10
#11 The Final Cut
After one listen, it is pretty obvious why this album was made: The Wall was really poplar and Pink Floyd was like, "that album was really popular, lets do that again." That is good and well, but for whatever reason, despite perfectly copying the album's unique sound, they weren't able to recreate the other aspects of The Wall that made it good, like the fantastic writing, the catchy melodies, and the raw emotion present in every song of the album. The result is a mediocre, slow and dreary, album. The failures of this album can also be attributed to the band's internal conflicts. Throughout the album's recording, David Gilmour clashed with Rodger Waters over the album's thematic direction, after Waters suddenly changed it, and Waters accused Gilmour of being lazy in contributing music. Waters recalled in an interview that the album was miserable to record because they were always fighting. Sometimes he was even angry while singing, which can be heard in his vocals. Just like The Wall, The Final Cut is a concept album. This time it is about war, specifically about issues surrounding soldiers in World War II. Waters didn't agree with Margret Thatcher's handling of the Falklands War, and hoped to draw parallels between the two events. It is also somewhat about Rodger Waters's father, who died in the war when he was young. These were concepts which were also explored to a lesser degree in The Wall on songs like "Another Brick in the Wall Part 1" and "Goodbye Blue Sky". The first The Final Cut, "The Post War Dream," does a good job of introducing the concept by accusing governments of going to war just to achieve "the post war dream" or the idea that war is needed for peace and prosperity afterwards. Some good lyrics from this track are "Tell me true, tell me why, was Jesus crucified? Was it for this that Daddy died? Was it for you? Was it me?
Did I watch too much T.V.? Is that a hint of accusation in your eyes?" and "What have we done, Maggie what have we done? What have we done to England? Should we shout, should we scream 'What happened to the post war dream?' Oh Maggie, Maggie what did we do?" These lyrics establish the album's themes of war, the death of Waters's father, and his criticisms of Margret Thatcher. It is also worth mentioning "The Fletcher Memorial Home," which is a very strange, but good, song, which seems to be criticizing politicians and their handling of The Cold War.
Notable Tracks: "The Post War Dream", "Your Possible Pasts", "The Fletcher Memorial Home", "Not Now John"
Rating 6/10
Did I watch too much T.V.? Is that a hint of accusation in your eyes?" and "What have we done, Maggie what have we done? What have we done to England? Should we shout, should we scream 'What happened to the post war dream?' Oh Maggie, Maggie what did we do?" These lyrics establish the album's themes of war, the death of Waters's father, and his criticisms of Margret Thatcher. It is also worth mentioning "The Fletcher Memorial Home," which is a very strange, but good, song, which seems to be criticizing politicians and their handling of The Cold War.
Notable Tracks: "The Post War Dream", "Your Possible Pasts", "The Fletcher Memorial Home", "Not Now John"
Rating 6/10
#12 The Endless River
The Endless River is to Pink Floyd what Wish You Were Here is to Syd Barret, a final goodbye and sendoff. As the previous sentence suggests, this is Pink Floyd's last album. It was made by David Gilmore and Nick Mason after the departure of Rodger Waters and death of Richard Wright. The album includes several tracks that Wright wrote or helped wright before his death, and he also appears on several of the tracks playing keyboards. The album is completely instrumental with the exception of the last track "Louder Than Words". The instrumentals on this album are very reminiscent of pre-wall Floyd; songs like "A Saucer Full of Secrets", "Atom Heart Mother", "One of These Days", and "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" particularly come to mind. Some notable instrumentals on this album are "Skins", "Autumn '68", and "Talkin' Hawkin'". "Skins" is a somewhat experimental piece very reminiscent of early Floydian experimentation, "Autumn '68" I just mention because its name is a callback to the song Summer '68 off of Atom Heart Mother, and "Talkin' Hawkin'" uses samples from a Steven Hawking Lecture. Pink Floyd also used samples from the same lecture in the song "Keep Talking" off of The Division Bell. At this point you are probably asking "What about that last song, the non-instrumental track, 'Louder Than Words'?". Well, I'm glad you asked, "Louder Than Words" is a great track who's lyrics, interestingly enough, were written by David Gilmour's wife, Polly Samson after watching the band interact with each other during a rehearsal. The instrumentation on this song is at best mediocre to acceptable, but those lyrics are top notch, and perfectly bring a close to the album, and the band's career in general. They talk about how the band members sometimes fight, sometimes feel lost, but in the end stick together because they know what they do is very important to millions of people, "It's louder than words, this thing that we do, it's louder than words." This song, and really this entire album in general is like a final hug goodbye from Pink Floyd to their fans. It definitely isn't their best or most groundbreaking album, but it is still an extremely effective album and a relaxing listen.
Notable Tracks: "Skins", "Talkin' Hawkin'", "Louder Than Words"
Rating: 5.5/10
#13 A Momentary Lapse of Reason
After Pink Floyd released The Wall it seemed like they were kind of lost for a while. They desperately grasped for what made The Wall so popular. First they released The Final Cut which was basically a poor attempt at trying to copy the sound of The Wall exactly, and then they released this album, A Momentary Lapse of Reason. On this album they tried to make the album popular by taking inspiration from popular mainstream bands of the time. As I mentioned earlier under The Division Bell, U2 is what comes to mind for me, mostly because that is a band I am somewhat familiar with. What really makes this album fall short is it doesn't really sound like a Pink Floyd album, it sounds more like an album by a mediocre late 80s pop rock band that is heavily influenced by Pink Floyd. The result is an album that is missing most of what makes the band good like trippy psychedelic soundscapes, experimentation, progressive rhythms and melodies, etc. As a result, the album is kind of bland. That being said, this album isn't a total miss, there are still several tracks on it worth listening to, and besides those, there really isn't anything on the album that I'd say is particularly bad, just kind of boring. The best track on this album by far is "Learning to Fly". This is an extremely catchy song that I could imagine fondly listening to on the radio as I drive through the country side. This song also has some of the grand, catchy melodies that Pink Floyd would use, much more successfully, on their next album, The Division Bell. Another good song on this album, "One Slip" is an example of the band using the poppy sound of this album well. This song uses a catchy melody and background guitar riffs straight out of the U2 playbook to create a genuinely good pop rock song. Hay, remember that time that Pink Floyd tried to be a pop band? No? Me neither, moving on.
Notable Tracks: "Learning to Fly", "One Slip", "On the Turning Away"
Rating: 5/10
We are now entering Pink Floyd's darkest period musically. Immediately after Syd Barret left Pink Floyd, the band seemed a bit lost. They had hired David Gilmour to replace Syd, but without Syd writing all of the songs, they didn't know what to do for their next, non soundtrack, album. Richard Wright, the keyboardist came up with the idea that they each make their own solo improvisational piece to put on the album. Initially, the band members were excited by this idea, wanting to create what Wright called "real music," but as time went on, they became more and more frustrated with it, as they realized it wasn't going to be any good. Wright himself later called the project "pretensions." Gilmour said he "went into a studio and started waffling about, tacking bits and pieces together" and he "just bullshitted" some parts. As you can probably imagine, this album isn't very good. It mostly consists of each of the band members randomly diddling their respective instruments. That being said, Waters' contributions, "Grantchester Meadows" and "Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict" and Gilmour's contributions, "The Narrow Way: Parts 1 - 3" are tolerable. This makes sense considering Waters and Gilmour eventually become the frontmen of the band. "Grantchester Meadows" sounds the most like a standard Pink Floyd song out of all of the songs on the album, and sounds almost like something off of Saucer Full of Secrets. On "Furry Animals," Waters uses mouth noises to imitate different animal sounds, which is very interesting. "The Narrow Way" is an interesting experimental piece that almost sounds like something made by modern experimental groups, like Nurse With Wound, except more mild. Besides these tracks, there isn't really much worth listening to on this album, unless you really want to hear Wright and Mason diddling around on their keyboards and drums. This album also comes with a live record which is actually pretty good! In particular, the live recording of the b-side "Careful With That Axe, Eugene" is far superior to the original recording. The song has a great build up, and a lot of energy which isn't present in the studio version. The rest of the songs are good recordings of some of my favorite tracks from previous albums.
Notable Tracks: "Careful with That Axe, Eugene (Live)", "Grantchester Meadows", "Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict", "The Narrow Way Parts 1-3"
Rating: 3.5/10
Notable Tracks: "Learning to Fly", "One Slip", "On the Turning Away"
Rating: 5/10
#14 Ummagumma
Notable Tracks: "Careful with That Axe, Eugene (Live)", "Grantchester Meadows", "Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict", "The Narrow Way Parts 1-3"
Rating: 3.5/10
#15 More
So, here it is, the worst Pink Floyd album. Man it took a long time to get here, mostly due to procrastination on my part it took 2-3 months for me to write this whole thing, and it involved hours of listening to every album over and over, making notes on what I liked and disliked about each one. It was a lot of work, and I'm probably not going to do something like this again any time soon, so enjoy this. Going further off on a tangent, you may notice that I started with my favorite album, and worked down. This is because it has always been a pet peeve of mine when websites rank albums, and make me scroll all the way to the bottom to see what I should listen to. With this format, if you just want an album recommendation, you can easily see it at the top, but if you are actually interested in what I have to say, you will scroll down, and actually read everything. That means if you are reading this, you are actually interested in what I have to say, or maybe just scrolled to the bottom to see why I hate More so much.
Anyway lets get to the actual review. More is Pink Floyd's first soundtrack album, and their first album after Syd Barret leaving. You may ask me, how can this album be worse than Ummagumma, the album that was just instrument diddling? Well, at least instrument diddling is interesting. The songs on this album aren't particularly offensive like some of the tracks off of that album, but almost none of them have any interesting qualities. It's an entire album of mediocre soft rock, with the occasional weird instrumental thrown in. Whenever I listen to this album, I find myself wanting to tare my hair out with boredom before I'm even halfway through. Part of what makes this album so bad is that it actually
starts ok, giving you a false sense of security, and then slowly bores
you to death as the album goes on. The second song on the album, "The Nile Song", is actually a loud, exciting, energetic song that I love, and the first and third track, "Cirrus Minor" and "Crying Song" are fairly boring, but within an acceptable range. Those two are a pleasant listen on their own, although I wouldn't call them favorites in any sense. This is the only Pink Floyd album that I find it truly grating to get through, and I don't recommend listening to any of it, except for "The Nile Song", which is surprisingly good.
Notable Track: "The Nile Song"
Rating 1.5/10
So there you have it! Every Pink Floyd album ranked! Do you agree with we? Disagree? What is your ranking?
Comments
Post a Comment