THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

"The Dark Side of the Moon" is well known as the best album ever made by Pink Floyd, together with Wish You Were Here and Animals. This album leads Pink Floyd away from long instrumental suites like Echoes or Atom Heart Mother, and so there are 10 tracks totally.

"Speak to Me" starts with an heartbeat, that grows in volume until you can start hearing other various noises, each one representing one song (the heartbeat stand for "Breathe"). The wall of noises keep building up, until a scream introduces us to the mellow "Breathe (In the Air)". The steel guitar takes us into a more calm mood, that goes on for three minutes.

Fast. This is everything "On the Run" tells us. A fast, fast and hypnotic synthetizer riff keeps playing, while its timbre encounters little changes. We can hear noises of trains, airplanes, airports. Fast. But we took it too fast, and an explosions stops us.

Now some clocks start moving, and then start ringing. At the start the song is slow, then we can hear a rototom solo and the classic Pink Floyd sound of "Time". After this solo, the song becomes more rock-like, and there one of the best Gilmour's solos. At the end of the song there is a reprise of "Breathe", leading us to a piano. In "The Great Gig in the Sky", all we should listen to is the voice of the wonderful Clare Torry, that makes us just dream for about three minutes.

(Turn the vinyl)

The real rock song on this album, "Money" is one of the most known songs by Pink Floyd, for its easy-listening riff and for its 7/4 rythm. We can admirate a saxophone solo by Dick Parry, as well as an another awesome guitar solo by Gilmour.

The rythm changes to 4/4 and a cross fade lets us hear an organ, that followed by the other instruments create the sound of "Us and Them". This song isn't really exciting, besides a sax solo and its wonderful lyrics.

At the end of Us and Them we get into "Any Colour You Like", the most psychedelic song on the album. The solos are really good, especially the way Gilmour uses stereo to create a "question-and-answer" feel. The two last songs, "Brain Damage" and "Eclipse", are nothing special, though Brain Damage has nice lyrics. Eclipse ends with the well-known phrase, "there is no dark side of the moon really, matter of fact it's all dark" and then an heartbeat, the same we listened to at the start, fades out, making this a cyclic album, even if it's not a concept one.

The overall mood, the solos, the lyrics, the good use of noises and FX, make this a very good Floyd album, though it's getting farther from prog, so i can't consider it a "prog masterpiece". 4 stars, but really 4.5!

EDIT: Recently I have realized that the melodies on this album are all really wonderful; there is just a way you can understand it: get an instrument and try to play melodies, chords or to improvise some solos. Slowly you will understand that it could be easily made into a jazz album. It's definitely worth the fifth star.