THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

I'm sorry but I simply must disagree with the vast bulk of reviewers for this album. This is quite possibly my least favorite Floyd album, mostly because I find the tunes to be overly bland. Don't get me wrong, there's certainly nothing musically offensive in any of the tunes, they simply fail to excite. "The Great Gig in the Sky" and "Us and Them" are perfect examples of the failings of this album in my opinion. A sign of a great prog album to my mind is a 20-25 minute track that feels like 7 minutes. A sign of a listless, dull prog album is a 7 minute song that feels like 20-25. And that's exactly what we have in those two tracks. The rest of the tracks just don't raise the bar much higher. What really astounds me is that this album rates so much higher than the truly great Floyd albums, Meddle and Animals. Both of which are light years beyond this in almost every respect. I'm not up on Floyd history, but the only thing that this album may have over those others is that Alan Parsons worked on the production. That's pretty darn cool. But he may have worked on other Floyd albums as well which I am not aware of.

Overall this rates as a slightly boring, barely progressive venture from Floyd. Ordinarily I'd give this a 2-2.5 star rating, but considering the (in my opinion undeserved) reputation of this album, people may look at you funny if you don't own this one, so...3 stars.