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There is great rock music, and then there are Pink Floyd, who make history in their own right in the history of music. So much so that by their third album, after two (excellent) works that went almost unnoticed and following the painful departure of their Leader (and friend) Syd Barrett, instead of attempting a musical and perhaps commercial shift, they released the soundtrack for a decidedly non-Hollywood film with a first-time director Barbet Schroeder.
We are in 1969, the film and its soundtrack are called More. The film, not exactly memorable but not negligible either, tells a love story between two drug addicts, set in Ibiza, which at the time of the events was a haven for young hippies, including musicians and poets, somewhat like Greenwich Village in New York.
The story goes that the young Pink Floyd, after being commissioned for the film by the director, locked themselves inside the Abbey Road Studios in London for a week, engaging in jam sessions from which the thirteen tracks of the album were born.
The jam session atmosphere is very distinctly heard on the album, as none of the tracks sound "studied" or composed but rather like little fish caught along the turbulent course of a raging river.
Take for example Up the Khyber and More Blues: the former is a beautiful Jazz composition written and played by Mason and Wright, the latter engaged in a stunning sequence of dissonant chords played partly on the piano, partly on his organ, his personal showpiece and the band's distinctive mark; the latter is a blues rarity for Pink Floyd, who, although musically originating in a blues territory, hardly ever used it except in this piece, written by all four members but with a certain stylistic dominance of Gilmour.
Crying Song, Green is the Colour, and Cymbaline are three pieces by Waters (sung by Gilmour). They represent the peak of the album, three masterpieces with a strong folk flavor: one wonders what Bob Dylan would have given in years that were certainly not easy for him compositionally (those were the years of Nashville Skyline and Self Portrait) to compose such pieces with the same ease and improvisation as the four young Englishmen. Green is the Colour is a wonderful acoustic sketch, with a Van Morrison-like blues-soul flavor, characterized by acoustic guitar and piano and embellished with sweet flute notes (played by Mason's wife). Cymbaline has the same soul structure with a more jazz imprint, a singable refrain (not common in Pink Floyd's pieces of those years), and a beautiful organ ending by the great Wright (such an ending in live performances was much longer, one of the most beautiful things played by the Floyd's keyboardist: for such listening, I refer to the numerous live bootlegs in circulation). Crying Song is a psychedelic folk ballad, very close to Syd Barrett's style, embellished with a beautiful slide solo by Gilmour.
Another masterpiece of the album is Cirrus Minor, also a piece composed by Waters and sung by Gilmour. This track is among the most beautiful of Pink Floyd: it begins folk, with an acoustic guitar that in some ways anticipates If from Atom Heart Mother, but soon the extraordinary Wright takes center stage with moving melodic intersections of Organ, Hammond, and Farfisa. In my opinion, this intervention by Wright has the same beauty, albeit in a much more concentrated form, as what we will hear later in Echoes: I consider these two tracks the best interventions (among many) by the Floyd's keyboardist.
The Nile Song and Ibiza Bar are two Hard rock tracks, two seeds sown there by Pink Floyd for the benefit of many bands that in those years would give rise to the new genre (Black Sabbath): one could say, exaggerating, that they invented Hard Rock, only to immediately discard it: they had other miracles to perform in music. The tracks are sung with brute force by Gilmour who, as reported by those present at the recordings, was intentionally tipsy to give the piece more strength (it can also be heard in the raw sound of his guitar): never again would the London musician, known for his composed style, repeat the feat.
For many, including staunch critics and fans, this album does not belong in the Pink Floyd discography. I, on the other hand, recommend it, even to newcomers to the band: it would be a great way to get to know and love them.
Tracklist and Lyrics
01 Cirrus Minor (00:00)
In a churchyard by a river,
Lazing in the haze of midday,
Laughing in the grasses and the graze.
Yellow bird, you are alone
In singing and in flying on,
In laughing and in leaving.
Willow weeping in the water,
Waving to the river daughters,
Swaying in the ripples and the reeds.
On a trip to Cirrus Minor,
Saw a crater in the sun
A thousand miles of moonlight later.
02 The Nile Song (00:00)
I was standing by the Nile
When I saw the lady smile.
I would take her out for a while,
For a while.
Oh, my tears wept like a child.
How her golden hair was blowing wild.
Then she spread her wings to fly,
For to fly.
Soaring high above the breezes,
Going always where she pleases.
She will make it to the islands in the sun.
I will follow in her shadow
As I watch her from my window.
One day I will catch her eye.
She is calling from the deep,
Summoning my soul to endless sleep.
She is bound to drag me down,
Drag me down.
06 Cymbaline (00:00)
The path you tread is narrow
And the drop is sheer and very high
The ravens all are watching
From a vantage point nearby
Apprehension creeping
Like a tube-train up your spine
Will the tightrope reach the end?
Will the final couplet rhyme?
And it's high time...
Cymbaline
Yes it's high time...
Cymbaline
Please wake me
A butterfly with broken wings
Is falling by your side
The ravens all are closing in
And there's nowhere you can hide
Your manager and agent
Are both busy on the phone
Selling coloured photographs
To magazines back home
And it's high time...
Cymbaline
Yes it's high time...
Cymbaline
Please wake me
The lines converging where you stand
They must have moved the picture plane
The leaves are heavy round your feet
You hear the thunder of the train
Suddenly it strikes you
That they're moving into range
And Doctor Strange is always changing size
And it's high time...
Cymbaline
Yes it's high time...
Cymbaline
Please wake me
And it's high time...
Cymbaline
Yes it's high time...
Cymbaline
Please wake me
09 Ibiza Bar (00:00)
I'm so afraid of the mistakes that I made
Taking every time that I wake
I feel like a hard-boiled and cut-up man
So give me a time when the countries will lie on the storyline if kind
Are days are made since the first page
I've lived every line that you wrote
Take me down, take me down, from the shelf above your head
So give me a time when the countries will lie on the storyline if kind
And if I live on the shelf like the rest
And if love bleeds like a sad song
Please pick-up your camera and use me again
So give me a time when the countries will lie on the storyline if kind
Yea
12 A Spanish Piece (00:00)
Pass the tequila, Manuel
(glug, snort)
Listen, gringo, laugh at my lisp and I kill you
I think
This Spanish music
It sets my soul on fire
Lovely seniorita
Your eyes are like stars
Your teeth are like pearls
Your ruby lips
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