Pink Floyd
The Endless River

More than the last unexpected album by one of the greatest bands on the planet, "The Endless River" risks going down in history as an intent trial against its creators. Many have, in fact, focused on the actual necessity of the project, whether it is right or not to release an album of demos or slightly more as official, whether it was done for "love of money" or for a sincere and passionate memory of the late Wright. Thus, the "The Trial" of Watersian memory looms over the survivors of a musical idea, almost never faded by time, almost never forced as it was in the first post-Waters period, when the Floyds released two rather weak albums like "A Momentary Lapse of Reason" and "The Division Bell." If this "The Endless River" has one great merit, it is precisely that it deserves the title of the manifesto of the last Floydian years, being qualitatively two or three notches above the aforementioned anonymous works of the Gilmour-Mason (and Wright) firm.

"The Endless River" does not propose novelties, will not save music from a presumed stagnant moment, will not be the panacea for all the chronic ailments of the record industry. Following the predictable initial boom, it will almost fall into the forgotten shelf of real and virtual stores, no single or excerpt of it will persistently air on the radio. Probably this is its true strength: to sound "old," to sound like Floyd, to sound as the Pink Floyd of the "Post War Dream" would have and should have wanted, granting music the same dignity as the oppressive (in a domineering sense) lyrics of Roger Waters. It is everything a true fetishist of the group would have always wanted to hear: that something like "Shine On" ("It’s What We Do"), that something like "Saucerful of Secrets" ("Sum" but also "Autumn ’68"), a new "Us And Them" ("Anisina") and even a "Run Like Hell" ("Allons-Y Part 1 and 2"). Gilmour, Mason, and the good spirit of Wright do what they must do: warm the cold bones of the fans by the fire, wrapping them in the main theme dear to the group's history: the absence of someone, the melancholy post-loss.

It probably won't be the best, but it is certainly the most sincere and heartfelt of farewells. The search for quality, not novelty, can sometimes be sufficient.