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Rating: After the release of Atom Heart Mother, Pink Floyd were under pressure to release a worthy follow-up to the previous album.
The initial sessions focused on the project of recording an entire album without musical instruments; the idea was to use kitchen utensils, bottles, cutlery, glasses, lampshades, pieces of sawn wood. Realizing the impossibility of completing such a project, they redirected their efforts to a 20-minute track provisionally titled "Nothing – Parts 1 to 24". Pink Floyd attempted a new approach, recording the basic tapes one at a time, without listening to each other. "At the end of January (1971), we listened to what we had recorded and found ourselves with thirty-six different fragments, which sometimes related to each other, sometimes not," recalls Gilmour. Using material also from previous sessions, they tried it live in April as "Return Of The Son of Nothing". The title remained that way for several months until the track was included in MEDDLE, occupying an entire side, with the definitive name of "Echoes".
Considered by many to be the true masterpiece of Pink Floyd, "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. Musically well-constructed, with precise architectures that develop in a crescendo, it contains within it a "song" in two parts separated by an oasis of sounds. Of the period between Barrett's departure and the release of The Dark Side Of The Moon, this is probably the most representative track, as well as the best in terms of sound, lyrics, and interpretation. The highest point reached by "those" Pink Floyd, and also the last real suite they created.
The initial note that opens and closes the track was carefully studied after being born by chance from the piano being fed into a Binson eco unit. And there are some refinements, like this one mentioned by Gilmour: "Consider the final chorus, the infinite background chorus. There are musical effects through which a melody seems to continue... like in Escher's drawings, where the stairs go up, up, and never reach anywhere. Well, 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".
A great live success, being one of the most requested and, in more recent concerts, one of the most missed.
The other track from Meddle that became a classic is "One Of These Days", an instrumental where a heavily effected and dubbed bass is the real protagonist. Mason's voice, filtered to become unrecognizable, states "one of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces". Then a slide style guitar starts with distortion, and it's a delightful frenzy of sounds with a driving rhythm.
It's noteworthy that in Italy the track has been the historic theme song of the sports program Dribbling for years.
The rest of the album, as with Atom Heart Mother, consists of pleasant songs that balance out the expanded atmospheres of the suites. Excellent "Fearless", a piece we could define as country rock, with a good feel, a desolate lyric accompanied by a chorus of football fans singing the anthem "We'll Never Walk Alone". "A Pillow of Wind" is a splendid acoustic piece, proof of the excellent Waters/Gilmour partnership. "San Tropez" is a kind of jazz cocktail by Wright, the most refined and "classic" in the compositions of the period.
At the close of the first side, a fun track born from an improvisation in the studio featuring a dog was included. Waters: "Dave took care of Seamus while the owner was in the USA, and he brought him with him to the studio. One day he said: 'I want to show you something, this dog sings'. He pulled out a harmonica and started playing it, and suddenly the dog started barking. So we involved him in a little 12-bar track".
The cover, always by Hypgnosis, depicts an ear immersed in water. Notably, inside is the appearance of a photo of the group, which would be the last until the release of A Momentary Lapse of Reason. A detail that surely contributed to amplifying the aura of mystery and fascination that characterized Pink Floyd for many years.
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 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 FLOYDMAN
Water, 'Water was the perfect subject for this album'… it is changeable yet constant and controllable, in some ways even varied and different.
'Echoes' represents the best sound symphony of Pink Floyd: an advanced stage, another step… toward the Dark Side of the Moon.
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.
