DAVID GILMOUR

This is an underappreciated gem and is a must have for fans of Gilmour's amazing guitar playing. The album, as Gilmour's playing,is based in blues rock but the album often ventures out into the progressive genre particulary with the instrumental It's Definitely. Several songs are instrumentals and even the songs with lyrics have long instrumental sections focusing on Gilmour's playing. Not a natural lyricst Gilmour employed the likes of Ken Baker, Ed Stuart, and Roy Harper(the singer on Have a Cigar) to pen the lyrics to There's No Way Out of Here, Cry from the Street, and Short and Sweet respectively. Gimour himself wrote the lyrics to three other songs and at times his words can be quite evocative especially on So Far Away. However, Gilmour's lyrics pale in comparision to Roger Waters' and if your main focus is the lyrics you'll be disappointed with this effort compared to Pink Floyd. However, Gilmour more than makes up for his deficieny as a lyricst with a multitude of melody both vocally and instrumentally that surpasses many Floyd albums. The album in particular showcases Gilmour's mastery of the guitar more than even Floyd albums did. Gilmour proves with such treasures as Raise My Rent and Mihailis that an instrumental piece often can be just as moving as singing, a truth lost in today's popular music. Having said that though, Gilmour's singing top notch and quite melodic especially on There's No Way Out of Here and Short and Sweet. During the sessions for this album Gilmour came up with the tunes for both Comfortably Numb and Run Like Hell, but he decided to save them for a future project which of course turned out to be the Wall. Despite the witholding of those two classics, Gilmour's first solo effort is quite powerful offering more melody than the previous Floyd album, Animals, while still rocking out just as hard. I highly recommend this album but I can't quite bring myself to grant it 5 stars because although lyrically the album is good it is not outstanding.