WISH YOU WERE HERE

Pink Floyd is probably my all-time favorite band, David's stunning guitar playing, Roger's dark and powerful lyrics, Rick's smooth Keyboard and piano playing, and Nick's typical Floydish drums. The 1973 album Dark Side Of The Moon, probably their best known work, was to me, though being a great album, a bit overrated. The 1975 release Wish You Were Here was just as Dark Side a big hit, millions of copies have been sold. Though Dark Side in the end seems to have got more succes, Wish You Were Here is in my opinion way better. Dark Side Of The Moon was made of relatively short and pretty accesible songs such as Money and Time. Wish You Were Here is made up of only 5 songs, which are harder to get into than most of Dark Side's songs. In this review, I will review each song on it's own, starting of with the first track on the album, Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I-II-III-IV-V).

Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I-II-IIV-IV-V): A pretty calm start of the album. This song is together with the title track dedicated to founder Syd Barett. The songs starts of with a quiet, eery synth, wich after a while turns into the first guitar solo of the song. David's guitar playing in this song is amazing, the cool, clean guitar really characterises the song. After the first solo there is the famous four note riff, which you will never forget again once you've heard it. After David's second and third solo's part V starts. The fifth part of the song is made up of a lyrical part and a saxophone solo based on the 4 note riff. The opener of WYWH is fantastic, I have barely heard music that could compete against this amazing piece.

Welcome To The Machine: From Shine on we go to Welcome to the machine, probably the darkest song of the album. This song, together with the next one is about record companies. the power of this song, aside from the lyrics, are in Rick's synth. The last minutes of the song are filled with a powerful synth solo. Welcome To The Machine is a great song, though I can't really compare it to the songs of this album such as Shine On, The real outstanding Floyd songs.

Have A Cigar: Another song about record companies. Have A Cigar is the fastest song of the album, it's also much more accesible than the first two songs, but that doesn't mean it's not a good song. Have A Cigar has been my favorite Pink Floyd song for a long while, the funky riff, the great vocals of Roy Harper and David's guitar solo make this song one of the band's best.

Wish You Were Here: Another Song about Syd Barett,which just as Have A Cigar is a pretty accesible song. I find this one the least good song of the album, it's just not as powerful and epic as the other ones. The song is basically made up out of some chords, with 2 solo's by David Gilmour. The lyrics are pretty good and really show how much the band members miss Syd. All by All not as good compared to the other songs from the album, but still a very nice one.

Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts VI-VII-IIX-IX): The Final song of the album. Starts of with some synth wich turns into a slide guitar solo. The slide guitar solo is a very epic one, wich does really brings me shivers. After the solo there are some vocals, not as strong as in part V of Shine On, they also are much shorter than in part V. The rest of the song is pretty much based on Rick's keyboard playing. The minutes this is done are not very exciting, after a while it will get a little bit boring. The Final track is pretty good, though most of the album is better than this.

I find WYWH the best of Pink Floyd, it's definately worth buying!

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