Pink Floyd
The Endless River

I would award the Nobel to the inventor of Spotify but at the same time, an accusation for crimes against "cellophane-shredding surprise".

This allowed me TODAY and FOR FREE to listen in full legally, honestly, and with decent quality to this unexpected The Endless River. A semi-anomalous release marked by the multinational Pink Floyd.

The tweet premise of David's ever-fresh wife, Polly Samson, shook the sleepy, stuffed-with-crappy-music world in the summer of 2014.

Times have changed, and from the Astoria, a message deliberately escapes on Instagram, announcing a NEW PINK FLOYD ALBUM AFTER TWENTY YEARS. Without but with Richard Wright.

He is partly present in the 1993 multitracks, sessions not used in the solid Division Bell. A few years ago, Gilmour couldn't start his new solo work without his friend Richard and feeds Phil Manzanera 20 hours of music to analyze, dated twenty years ago. Manzanera extracts material and sifts it, getting a rough draft. Mason and Gilmour become passionate and work on it for a month in overdubbing, and there you go, everything is ready. Great work also by Andy Jackson and one of the ORB, whose name I don't remember, to export the recordings to current quality levels. I'll say it straight away, it annoys me a priori that Manzanera, who comes from "More Than This", chooses most of the material.

We are facing a kind of tribute to the great Wright, without evoking him like Queen for years, but with the usual aplomb of these now-septuagenarians. I also add that they really have years of free time behind them and can now afford ANYTHING. It's that they're slow, damn it, you have responsibilities.

The Endless River is a good product at the end of the day, it inevitably mirrors the atmosphere of Division Bell, and we find ourselves with the same potential in arrangements. Here and there, you hear IDENTICAL registers and timbres that don't betray their origin. There are some nice insights in the midst of ambient work that sometimes takes you back 40 years. It needs to be listened to multiple times, I myself am no longer used to such productions, and the pace is out of date. It doesn’t surprise but benevolently hypnotizes a bit. It can be boring, understandable. Unfortunately, notes reminiscent of Stephen Schlacks echo sometimes; melodies are too anti-Floyd to me. I'm talking about Anisina. Some fooling around from Astoria, even irritating, like Eyers to Pearls.

The parts Sum, Allons Y, Surfacing are definitely beautiful.

It's not a masterpiece, but I don't feel like wrecking it. The usual meticulous care is appreciable in everything, Mason comes out sprightly with some passages he hadn't touched in a long time. Dave Gilmour doesn’t dominate by stuffing each piece with Fender Strato; he accompanies underneath + some nice little solos. The solo in Louder Than Words is fabulous to me, and for those who love this extraordinary guitarist, it’s a nice treat.

It’s the sound of the Floyd that creates this nostalgic recall necessity. All this raises questions for me, and I address them to Dave:

1) Given that in 1994 you were finally with Wright back in the creative process, wasn’t there room for another Floyd album-tour with him ALIVE before 2008, his departure?

2) Instead of Cluster One’s pot, didn't you have some better stuff here? Why didn't you use something you already had?

I want the physical copy of this work, I'll shelve it at the end, bracing the others. I don’t know how much I’ll listen to it afterward, but I want it. I got mad with myself because 20 years ago, I rushed to the store and BOUGHT Division Bell, and the element of surprise, no matter how small, is always satisfying. Now with this network, you preclude all of this, and even the Floyd, for better or worse, who have always created great expectations, have fallen into the traps of short stupid pre-listens to sell themselves. They could have kept quiet and just released the title. That would have been enough.......

All this saddens, it feels like it’s the END and let's take it for what it is....a half-gift given the drift.