A MOMENTARY LAPSE OF REASON

A lot of Pink Floyd faithful must have found it very difficult to digest the departure of Roger Waters, and to witness the mutually destructive legal mess that ensued between Waters and the rest of the band.

I think the undeservedly low rating of AMLOR can be partially explained by the sense of resentment many people may still feel about what happened in the faraway '80s on the Planet Pink Floyd. Many folks felt and continue to feel that AMLOR was more like a solo album by Gilmour et al, as in "Geez, it's not even Pink Floyd".

It's of course true that with Waters walking out "Waters' Pink Floyd" was doomed. But before Waters' Pink Floyd there had been "Barrett Pink Floyd", which faded out after just a couple of albums. Instead of sinking into oblivion, the band hired Gilmour full-time, and went on to become one of the greatest "prog" phenomena of the 1970s, so there.

Let's judge AMLOR purely on its merits, without comparing it to what had been before or might/could have been. The Side A has some good- and some not-so-good moments, but the Side B is phenomenal. It feels like a 20+ minute long epic song, broken down into "phases", or "facets", describing something really momentous and awe-inspiring, like for example the creation of a middling galaxy :)

I treasure AMLOR as one of my favorite PF albums, sitting a little below the DSOTM and a little above the Animals. I would reiterate that I respect and appreciate the rest of the Pink Floyd's discography, but my "desert island" picks would be these three, WYWH being perhaps a distant 4th).

Five stars, gladly.