MEDDLE

Meddle is for many people the greatest album before Pink Floyd made their breakthrough internationally (with Dark Side Of The Moon), including me. It has a great mysterious and slightly dark/psychedelic ambience over the whole album - well, almost the whole album, it also shows the new style Pink Floyd introduces, a more calm and relaxing feeling. Let's look at the tracks and find out why it's so appreciated by prog fans.

We start off with a very repetitious track, which is a bit of a downside to this track in my opinion. Therefore I can't tell you a lot more about it. What I do have to say is that it introduces the album and it's overall feeling quite well.

The next, "A Pillow Of Winds" is a calming, very listenable Floydian song. It starts out pretty happy, but it gets more mysterious as the song progresses. Gilmours voice suits this song perfectly I think, the song has an own personality and Gilmour is an unmissable element.

"Fearless" is a track which is a little more happy, but it also sounds quite relaxed. Ok, this sets you in a fine mood, but it's a bit boring though, too few interesting things to listen too; almost like it was very late at night and they thus almost fell asleep playing this. Oh yeah and by the way, we like Liverpool.

The first time I heard "San Tropez", I couldn't help thinking if this is truly composed by Pink Floyd, as it's very different. A fine song though, it sets you in a certain, notable mood. Somtimes it seems like if every song on the first side of the LP is made to prepare you for the masterpiece "Echoes". So does the next song "Seamus", making you really long for something different, something psychedelic...

There, we get what we want; and it compensates the first half of the album. Starting very mysterious and melodic, we go through a lot of nice chord progressions, we see the rise of something, but what the song really is about, is totally up to you. The lyrics are so beautiful, lyric, and meaningful and cohese, but it's hard to say exactly what it's about. A way to prove that this song is truly terrific is covering this song on piano, then you'll see the beauty of the harmonic structures and all the effort there must have been put into this piece. Also you hear so many influences and styles mixed, it's one of the most eclectic pieces Pink Floyd have composed. And although we go through a lot of different "rooms" (sounds), as I always like to say, it all flows very naturally. Because it's so eclectic, it suits perfectly as a bridge between the dark/psychedelic Floyd phase and the more symphonic/classic prog phase. Oh, by the way you must have heard Rick playing this (especcially the intro) as played live in Gdańsk. It's the last tour he did and he did it just outstanding.

It's very difficult to rate this album, as there is such a big difference between the first half of the album and "Echoes". All in all it will be 4 stars for me.