Pink Floyd
Meddle

For a long time "Meddle" remained the last Pink Floyd album where the band was portrayed. Moreover, the last one - to this day - featuring the lineup with Waters. A symptomatic sign that this album represented a watershed or the end of a cycle?

Perhaps. In fact, the compositional structure of "Meddle" is so heterogeneous compared to previous and subsequent works that it makes you think of a message between the lines, undoubtedly intuitive, which determines the definitive position of Pink Floyd in the cultural landscape of international rock, as well as the detachment from the labels that had been attached to them during the Barrett and post-Barrett phase. "Meddle" puzzled the growing crowd of fans back then, who, after the bombastic-progressive symphonies and the experimental diversions of "Atom Heart Mother", did not expect an excursion into blues and intimate ballads, especially when combined with the hammering incipit of a piece like "One Of These Days" and the memorable suite of "Echoes". Something evidently sounded like betrayal, or rather a lack of decision on the path to take after the psychedelic exploit and the altogether brief prog-rock season.

In reality, embodying Pink Floyd in the musings of blues wasn't all that surprising, if it's true that Gilmour himself had never denied nor renounced his love for the genre and, in fact, traces of more traditional musicality are found in various chapters of Floyd's discography from the '60s. If anything, what might have surprised was precisely this heterogeneous blend of styles, which as visually demonstrated by the almost contemporary film "At Pompeii", placed the band at the turning point of a consecration that necessarily had to free it from the clichés of psychedelia without distancing it from the experimental and avant-garde connotation; and at the same time had to consolidate the accessibility of music from which a public now estimated in millions of admirers expected emotions.

Thus, the monotone and lacerating tarantella of the opening track, which became one of the symbolic titles of the Floyd-Sound, is strongly counterpointed by the mellifluous atmospheres of "A Pillow Of Winds" and the acoustic strummings of "Fearless"; then hints at an apparent disengagement with "St. Tropez" and ends side A with the canine apotheosis of "Seamus", where Seamus is the name of the barking dog protagonist (in the Pompeii film the same track would become "Mademoiselle Nobs" because barking there was a greyhound so baptized).

Precisely due to "One Of These Days" the aforementioned follow-up tracks suffered long from underestimation, as their impact appeared lesser compared to what the group had written up to that point. This to the detriment of a courageous choice to present themselves in a more confidential guise and a series of lyrics that, all in all, do not fall short in quality. Indeed, I consider "A Pillow Of Winds" a very fitting and moving song, especially if assimilated with the view of its genesis: Mason recalls it was written during a vacation on the French Riviera, when they and their families spent pleasant days on the beaches and relaxing evenings in hotels playing mahjong - one of whose tiles was indeed called "pillow of winds". The strong naturalistic and climatic component of the lyrics marries the guitar phrasings with a lightness that Waters and Gilmour seldom found again.

As for "St. Tropez", which is another slice of lived life and "human" Floydian dimension, I must point out that Rita Pavone deluded herself for too long that the verses cited her name at the end, as a due homage to a season of Italian Mediterranean pop. Apart from the fact that Pavone would have had no real relevance to "St. Tropez" (if not a canzonettara fantasy), it is a fact that where the lyrics seem to mumble her name in slurred Italian, in reality, they say "later by phone".

Then there's "Echoes"... Indeed! This long suite seems to have been thoroughly discussed, both musically and emotionally. A suite, indeed, quite expansive that consists of well-defined parts and is structured like a dreamlike and mnemonic journey, which in the sounds of the two central parts finds the intangible evocation of what the verses say at the beginning and the end.

Mason and Gilmour remember with amusement that the alien sounds produced by the guitar in the most "experimental" phase of "Echoes" were generated by accident by inserting cables into echo and reverb processors backward. Put this way it seems like an unworthy blunder that diminishes the work's significance: in reality, it greatly expands its artistic dimension and demonstrates that the research path even in 1971 was operating at full capacity with the means available in EMI's studios. Again, far from the confidentiality of "Fearless" and "St. Tropez", here the Floyd return to speak a magniloquent and challenging language, which mixes with the now distinguishable canons of their style new sounds that would be fortunate from '73 onwards with their albums of total consecration.

"Echoes" has its best - and most well-aged - moments precisely in the more sophisticated instrumental passages, as the sung melody adds nothing new to what they had already demonstrated they could do. It's in Gilmour's interventions on the rhythmically strong and funky pedal bass of drums and organ that the music takes on truly involving profiles, meandering into beautiful and brief solos of distorted and reverberated six strings. And it is in the twilight and unsettling atmospheres of the central part that the surreal painting of a primeval and mysterious nature, like a painting by Max Ernst, comes to mind. Tracing some of "Ummagumma" and some of "Atom", here the four long-haired Floyds detach themselves definitively from the approximations of the live shows in student ballrooms and the basements of the UFO, giving a conscious - albeit often instinctive - structure to their sound style.

"Echoes" remains in the collective imagination a masterpiece, never inflated and never abused, whether for its length, or for its substantial indivisibility. The same cannot be said for "One Of These Days", which unsurprisingly was used ad nauseam for every kind of audio commentary and is still proposed as one of the essential hits alongside "Wish You Were Here" and "Money".

As usual, a final note regarding the cover; which left many doubtful until it was determined to be a large ear beneath a veil of water. . . . And I say: never was a cover more fitting for the album it contains. What other visual metaphor could better indicate the essence of the approach to Pink Floyd back then?