THE WALL

Pink Floyd

Psychedelic/Space Rock

4.10 | 3315 ratings

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Let's get something straight:Pink Floyd isn't Genesis,and this album has no resemblance to The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.In fact,it is closer to Tommy than anything else.

I wonder,had it been made in a better period for the band,if Pink Floyd could get a better result out of this work.This is a less progressive and more direct album than any other the band ever made before.Though it's clearly still Pink Floyd,this new sounding doen't please me at all.At times,the album sounds like commercial pop(though I believe this is intentional),like in Young Lust and Waiting For the Worms.Others,it's just a collection of weird sounds superficially intended to narrate a story.Well,The Who did the same thing and obtained a wonderfull result in their masterpiece,but something presented in Tommy simply lacks in The Wall.

It's not fair,however,to say that the album fails to captivate.The story told througout two discs really draws you into it(that is,if you can understand it at all.Well,a few listens are enough to get something out of it).But that's where the album fails:one may get excited by the captivating story,but that doesn't make the gaps of nothingess in beween the most important compositions dissapear.Since the first track,this album makes a promise it never fullfils:to reach a climax in which story and music would be deeply related to create the album's centerpiece(take for exaple Carpet Crawlers or Pinball Wizard).This grants The Wall a somewhat disorientated feel that is hard to ignore.

Musically,the highlights are the three parts of Another Brick In the Wall(then again,the monstruos success of the second part is ridiculously overlooked),Goodbye Blue Sky,Hey You and Comfortably Numb.Most of the remaining tracks are listenable due to the fact that you just want to follow the story,reading th lyrics and following the unfitable mood changes, song by song(hardly noticeable,though,if you're into the story that is being told).To the point that the music contained in Side B of disc 2 is no more than a vehicle for the on-going script.

It's really a shame that the band maintained so few of it's roots in this album(even though they were one of the very feel prog survivors to the Punk momevent).Maybe something more in the mood of Wish You Were Here could be suitable for this specific concept.

Which leads to the big question:why do people and critics praise it so much?My guess is that the highly elaborated concept(plus the movie adaptation)and the cult songs in which the rest of the album's music is hold on are enough to make a masterpiece out of it.I just cannot grant it more than 3 stars.

Gustavo Froes | 3/5 | 2009-2-18

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