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Rating: It's a major challenge for me to review what I consider the most controversial, ambiguous, mysterious album by Pink Floyd. Meddle, to meddle, to snoop, but also to engage, to participate. The famous album on whose cover reigns that ear (believed to be David Gilmour's) that seems to eavesdrop on what the listener is saying, the record with those delightful (but also unsettling) images of jewels and objects placed under a slight layer of water, that thin layer of transparent delicacy sufficient to "deform even if only by a few millimeters the image found within." Precious crystal of unattainable fragility. Water circles in a succession of gentle ripples. They undoubtedly evoke the last track, Echoes.
Water, "Water was the perfect subject for this album" says Storm Thorgerson, the group's designer "it is changeable yet constant and controllable, in some ways even varied and different". Exactly like this album, I would add. In this, one can find many songs, some highly experimental, others classic (for the group's clichés, of course), others very avant-garde.
The album opens with one of the band's mainstays in years to come, reprised in almost every tour of the Waters era and in all during the Gilmour era: "One Of These Days". Nick Mason recounts that in the beginning what inspired Roger for the famous bass line was the soundtrack of an English science fiction TV series, Doctor Who. Then the good Waters tried connecting his bass to some effects from Gilmour's Stratocaster guitar to create that metallic, eerie, menacing, and obsessive sound. When Dave heard the demo of this track, he didn't hesitate to insert a dazzling slide guitar solo in the second part; it was then Nick Mason's idea to include that grim and unsettling phrase, yelled and filtered through a vocoder, "One of these days, I'm going to cut you into little pieces". The hatred the band had for a BBC disc jockey since the time of Ummagumma drove them to cut, or "cut into little pieces," some of his phrases to insert into the suite "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast" on the album "Atom Heart Mother".
Thus, the vocoder threat had already occurred. They had effectively "shredded" him.
It continues with two songs of not excessive depth, "A Pillow Of Winds" and "Fearless": while the first serves as filler to "soften" the demonic atmosphere of "One Of These Days" with an ethereal and "floating" sound, the second is a typical example of Roger Waters' "verbal sentence." In an unsettling aura, the songwriter lashes out with words ready to strike everything and everyone: politics, society, the difficulty of communication. Let us continue.
At the time, Capitol, the Pink Floyd's major record label, was already tired of the songs, excessively leaden and steeped in that "quiet desperation is the English way," of the band. Therefore, they demanded the creation of a lighter and "carefree" track. Thus Waters churns out an unpretentious text, set to music by the good Rick Wright, narrating the peaceful life of Saint Tropez, the same town where, incidentally, Gilmour and Barrett were arrested on charges of performing as street artists.
At the start, it was Madmoiselle Knobbs, an Afghan hound who enjoyed howling sweetly to the harmonica played by Gilmour in Pompeii, in the famous "live." But then it was preferred to switch to another dog, rumored to be a lovable pet of Steve Marriott, member of Humble Pie.
This canine was trained to howl whenever it heard the sound of blues guitar in the air. Quickly, Gilmour brought the joyful quadruped to the studios and, with its help, recorded this song, whose terribly bluesy rhythm is accompanied by lyrics that simply evoke a dog howling at the last shards of the dying sun at sunset. Here ends.
...
Ping... ... ...Ping... ... ...Ping.
A droplet resounds in the air, produced by a "sonar" piano.
Just this....Ping...
After about a minute of sonic evocation, a rhythmic layer enters with a whispering guitar in crescendo. It grows more and more. Always more, until forming the main theme.
This is how the sublime duet of David Gilmour and Richard Wright begins.
"Over head an albatross has motionless upon the air
and deep beneath the rolling waves
in labyrinths of choral caves
the echo of a distant time
comes willowing across the sand
and everything is green and submarine"
The theme powerfully resumes after the first verses and once again rises, ultimately flowing, as if nothing happened, into a funky rhythm, ideally the third part of the song. This extends for several minutes, delighted by a sublime Hammond organ solo by Rick Wright, whom I consider to this day the major author of the "pinkfloydsound." Sporadically, between the tight rhythm and the organ, some haunted guitar interludes by David Gilmour appear. But once this part is over, everything goes silent, and a wind blows away the present rhythmic timbre. Screams, eerie cries coming from infinity, flashes, visions, bursts, past eras, millennia lasting merely seconds. An obsessive yet light and fragile rhythmic layer composed solely of cymbals brings us back to the main station, and here we hear the good old "...ping..." which takes us back to the start. And as at the beginning, everything rises, everything grows, ever higher, "you can almost reach infinity" said the producer about this part.
Here, at the end of this diabolic ride in honor of the "return of the son of nothing" (the provisional title of the song in live performances), returns, after a brief interlude that makes me think of a psychedelic transposition of a folkloric piece, the duet singing of David and Rick.
"and no-one sings me lullabies
and no-one makes me close my eyes
and so I throw the windows wide
and call to you across the skies"
With a final crescendo, the song concludes, clocking in at over 20 minutes. The track that, in my humble opinion, represents the best sound symphony of Pink Floyd: an advanced stage, another step, after Interstellar Overdrive, Saucerful of Secrets and Atom Heart Mother, for reaching the turn, on the dark side of the moon.
All this while all around
"Stranger passes in the street
by chance two separate glances meet
And I am you and what I see is me"
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
02 A Pillow of Winds (05:11)
A cloud of eiderdown
Draws around me
Softening the sound
Sleepy time when I lie
With my love by my side
And she's breathing low
And the candle dies
When night comes down
You lock the door
The book falls to the floor
As darkness falls
The waves roll by
The seasons change
The wind is warm
Now wakes the owl
Now sleeps the swan
Behold the dream
The dream is gone
Green fields, a cold rain
Is falling, in a golden dawn
And deep beneath the ground
The early morning sounds
And I go down
Sleepy time when I lie
With my love by my side
And she's breathing low
And I rise, like a bird
In the haze, when the first rays
Touch the sky
And the night winds die
03 Fearless (06:09)
You say the hill's too steep to climb
Climbing
You say you'd like to see me try
Climbing
You pick the place and I'll choose the time
And I'll climb that hill in my own way
Just wait a while for the right day
And as I rise above the tree-line and the clouds
I look down
Hear the sounds of the things you said today
Fearlessly, the idiot faced the crowd
Smiling
Merciless, the magistrate turns 'round
Frowning
And who's the fool who wears the crown?
No doubt in your own way
And every day is the right day
And as you rise above the fear-lines in his brow
You look down
Hear the sound of the faces in the crowd
"You'll never walk alone..."
04 San Tropez (03:44)
As I reach for a peach, slide a rind down behind
The sofa in San Tropez
Breakin' a stick with a brick on the sand
Ridin' a wave in the wake of an old sedan
Sleepin' alone in the drone of the darkness
Scratched by the sand that fell from my love
Deep in my dreams and I still hear her callin'
"If you're alone, I'll come home."
Backward and homebound, the pigeon, the dove
Gone with the wind and the rain, on an airplane
Owning a home with no silver spoon
I'm drinking champagne like a good tycoon
Sooner than wait for a break in the weather
I'll gather my far-flung thoughts together
Speeding away on the wind to a new day
And if you're alone, I'll come home
And I pause for a while by a country style
And listen to the things they say
Diggin' for gold with a hoe in my hand
Open a book, take a look at the way things stand
And you're leading me down to the place by the sea
I hear your soft voice, calling to me
Making a date for later by phone
And if you're alone, I'll come home
05 Seamus (02:16)
I was in the kitchen
Seamus, that's the dog, was outside
Well, I was in the kitchen
Seamus, my old hound, was outside
Well, the sun sinks slowly
But my old hound just sat right down and cried
06 Echoes (23:32)
Overhead the albatross hangs motionless upon the air
And deep beneath the rolling waves
In labyrinths of coral caves
The echo of a distant time
Comes willowing across the sand
And everything is green and submarine
And no-one showed us to the land
And no-one knows the where or whys
But something stirs and something tries
And starts to climb towards the light
Strangers passing in the street
By chance two separate glances meet
And I am you and what I see is me
And do I take you by the hand
And lead you through the land
And help me understand the best I can
And no one calls us to move on
And no one forces down our eyes
And no one speaks and no one tries
And no one flies around the sun
Cloudless everyday you fall upon my waking eyes
Inviting and inciting me to rise
And through the window in the wall
Come streaming in on sunlight wings
A million bright ambassadors of morning
And no-one sings me lullabies
And no-one makes me close my eyes
so I throw the windows wide
And call to you across the sky
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Other reviews
By zuckina
'Echoes' is a suite of more than twenty minutes, and on its own would be enough to elevate Meddle to the level of a masterpiece.
There is a melody that continues to be played, again and again, and at the same time it rises to higher frequencies, almost imperceptibly, and reaches nowhere. So is the Echoes chorus at the end.
By Torre Ste
"One Of These Days" spreads visceral energy to the listener, making one forget that this is the theme for Dribbling for a moment.
"Echoes" is a classic Pink Floyd suite to be listened to in the dark with closed eyes, freeing the mind from thoughts and letting oneself be carried away by the notes far from the real world.
By Breus
Meddle puzzled the growing crowd of fans back then, who...did not expect an excursion into blues and intimate ballads.
'Echoes' remains in the collective imagination a masterpiece, never inflated and never abused, whether for its length, or for its substantial indivisibility.
By Valeriorivoli
"One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces," is more than a phrase—it's a furious threat transformed into psychedelic art.
Pink works just when you put earplugs in for mumps and decontextualize them into an adjective... like listen to this piece it doesn't sound a bit old pink.
By insolito
Long live carefreeness. Long live freedom. Long live youth and long live the first joint under the balcony on a rainy night.
One day, your children will ask if magic exists. And you will let them hear this echo. They will never forget it.
