STOCK

When people compare this band to Pink Floyd, what they really mean is Momentary/Division Bell era Pink Floyd. There is nothing here that is remotely close in quality to classic 70s Floyd. This is kind of a free-for-all collection of unreleased material thrown together to make an album.

The songs are well played but mostly unmemorable. "Stock" is the right title for this because you get fairly stock sounding "art rock" tracks with Gilmour-ish sounding vocals and licks, plus the contrived "Floyd" sound effects added ever so nicely here and there and then given appropriate trippy titles like "Gentle Art of Swimming" to make you believe you're in for something heavy (you aren't!)

"The Way It Is" is a very nice happy song with a pretty chorus that no doubt has couples swaying back and forth at their gigs. "Gentle Art of Swimming" would seem to be the most ambitious piece here but I found it to be pretty mediocre with repetitive pacing, guitar effects, and vocals. There is a nice "ode to Dave" guitar solo for the last 90 seconds that doesn't quite make up for the previous 9 minutes. The best track is a 3 part song called "Forgive Me" (parts 1-3). Largely instrumental, though with some nicely emotional vocals, it is the one that goes for the jugular at least a little. Part 1 starts with nice acoustic over some warm keyboards which are ruined by a segue into pointless crowd noise. Part 2 starts very nice again and goes into the vocal part followed by a mellow ambient end that works well. Part 3 begins with drums and mid-paced vocals leading into a nice solo and then a second verse. Then it gets interesting..finally!! After a couple minutes of dead air, they come back in with this odd "San Tropez" like number that closes the record and makes you wish the previous 40 minutes had been so charmingly different.

It's too band that a band like this who gets a chance to release a nice 2 disc cd/dvd digipak isn't able to pull off something more challenging, rather than something so safe, so predictable. Think of how many other bands would kill for the chance to so something like this with both audio and video but never get the chance.

There are two other notables in the digipak version I have. One, you get a bonus second disc with the same album in 5.1 Surround DVD and a video history. Second, there is a nicely done cover of Syd's classic "Opel" which is a classy choice for a cover song. But all things considered, "Stock" is for fans of this group and David Gilmour only.