MEDDLE

To look at this album, we must first seperate the Floyd into four stages: the first being the Syd Barret led psychadelia (Piper), the second being the more folky era shortly after the addition of Dave Gilmour, the third-commercial superstardom (DSOTM-Final Cut), and the final stage-Gilmour led Floyd. 'Meddle' is a transitional album of sorts, between the second and third stages, the reason being that all band members still share songwriting duties. After this album, Waters took command of writing the lyrics, and much of the music. The fact that Gilmour writes some lyrics makes this album slightly uneven-some songs take theirselves very seriously, while others are meant to be humorous. Having said this, there is no real weak track on the album-which brings me to the "masterpiece" of this album.........'Echoes' is the most heralded track in the Floyd's catalog among progressive fans. It is a very atmospheric song, and occupies the entire second side of the original LP release-featuring some very slow, but excellent guitar work a la Mr. Gilmour, and the trademark vocal treatment a la Gilmour and Rick Wright. The song begins with a bluesy guitar intro that sounds very similar to that of 'Shine On', and 'willows' on for about 11 minutes before fading out into the abyss. You can really feel the "rolling waves" and "coral caves", but after the 11 minutes of music we are surprised (if you didn't read endless reviews of the album before listening to this song, you would be pretty surprised) by the screeching of whale-calls for about five minutes, after which the music fades back in, pulling the song full circle, 23 minutes and 31 seconds of genius. You can't just sit down and listen to this song, you really gotta take time and actually listen. Echoes was originally titled 'Return of the Sons of Nothing' and featured an apocalyptic theme of sorts before it was recorded in 1971.

Now for the remaining tracks, which hold up very well on their own, any of which could have easily fit onto one of Floyd's previous albums(with the exception of Piper). The opener 'One of These Days' was a radio staple back in the day, and features Nick Mason's lone vocal performance....."One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces", when I hear this, along with the scary guitar solo, I wonder why this wasn't the theme song to 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre". The song fades out into a chilling wind, and the gentle 'Pillow of Winds' begins, with Gilmour's lead vocal and lyrics. Another strong track 'Fearless' follows, which features Rodgers & Hammestein ("You'll Never Walk Alone"-- it sounds like fans chanting at a basketball/football game). The other two tracks are throw-aways of sorts-it's funny how Seamus is followed by the much more serious Echoes (now that the album plays on a disc, as opposed to having two sides). Anyway, Seamus is actually a pretty good song, the dog in the background sings along with the guitar- pretty creative, huh?

So there we have it, four acoustic songs, and the two better known opening and closing tracks. Overall, a bit uneven, but this provides us with a great combination of early Floyd and and the Dark Side era. Essential for any fan of Pink Floyd and anyone remotely interested in prog, or just classic rock in general.