A MOMENTARY LAPSE OF REASON

This is my least favourite Pink Floyd album. But there is nothing explicitly wrong with it. It's just sort of weak on all fronts. Wait... that does qualify as something wrong. Okay, so there IS something explicitly wrong with this; everything.

The single was overplayed and unmoving. The more contemporary (for the time) tracks are not really to my taste and judging from the album's chart position, the audience of that era weren't too bothered either. The more "classic Floyd" style songs are better (I enjoy the albeit brief soloing on 'Dog's of War'). But the filler really is filler, by no stretch of the imagination: 'Sign's of Life' sounds like somebody accidentally pressed the record button whilst noodling around in the studio. And 'A New Machine' is for some unexplainable reason split into two separate tracks (it's not like it was too long; combined it only clocks in at 2:24) and these are literally JUST vocals put through some dated vocoder. Maybe I'm being harsh; the band lacked their primary songwriter here. And the first few songs do [just about] hold my attention, but the entire second half of the album feels like one very long and boring song with no feeling or expression (or compositional quality, OR lyrical interest).

I think the reasons for the lack of focus here is because there was really no band. There was David Gilmour. That's one person. Nick and Rick's contributions were minimal and most of the stuff they DID play on was actually re-recorded by better musicians or machines (apparently they could barely play anymore (so why reform?!)). Given the subsequent lack of quality anyway, I'd dread to think how bad these songs must have been before Wright and Mason were overdubbed.

This album sucks. I hold no grudges against Pink Floyd because they had plenty of legitimate reasons for why this album sucks. But it still does.