WISH YOU WERE HERE

This album is tied with Animals for my favorite Pink Floyd album and my favorite album of all time. It's perfect. The packaging is, as always with Floyd, absolutely wonderful; however, I think this is Floyd's best packaging. The cover is, of course, one of the best and most iconic in rock, and the lyrics booklet has some wonderful photographical goodness from Storm. The lyrics are some of Waters' best, focusing on the fallen Syd Barrett and the evils of the music industry. However, I know that when you first listen to this, you will say, "THIS is Floyd's best album? Forget them!" But give it time. And I think many of their albums are very, very close to being as good as this one. But then again, I am a huge Floyd fan.

The tone is a bright and reflective one. I always associate this album with Summer, because I first got it in the summer, and the feel of the music is very airy and atmospheric, even if the lyrics aren't; whereas, Animals is very much a dark, bitter winter album.

SOYCD pt. 1--Honestly, there's nothing more that can be said about this one. It's Floyd's most famous prog piece, and rightly so.

Welcome to the Machine--This is more of a grower; although the speed of SOYCD takes some getting used to, many people have some trouble with this one. I'm not sure why; I thought it was better than the title track on first listen, but lots of other people don't. Just a warning. I think it's a wonderful song.

Have a Cigar--A very sarcastic song about the music industry. The most upbeat song on the album, it has a funky groove and Roy Harper on vocals, since Gilmour was very tired and Waters' voice was burnt out from so many takes of SOYCD. As you might know, Waters is tone-deaf, so he had to sing the vocals over, and over, and over again until he got it right--because he was singing out of key.

WYWH--The only song from this album that gets regular classic rock radio air play. Which may not be a good thing. It's still a great song, although it's a bit more in the pop vein; but if you want something that's completely uncommercial, then I advise you to head to the Avant-Prog section instead. But the more well known bands had to provide a single, and this was WYWH's. (although they got away with no single on Animals) It is a song about Syd, but it is also about the current state of the band. After the success of DSOTM, everyone went out and was enjoying their newfound wealth, and it was hard to get back into the studio and there was some tension. The song is really saying "wish you weren't here" to the other members. But that's only a deeper meaning for people who know the history of the band; really, it can be about anything you want it to, the lyrics are so vague.

SOYCD pt. 2--A beautiful closure to a beautiful album. Although I'm not a fan of the funky section, the eargasmic high guitar solo more than makes up for that. This song closes the album with a nice circle effect, since Waters did love his circles very much.

Overall, an essential buy for those who have a long musical attention span, enjoy a more mellow listen, (like most Floyd, this album does not rock very hard) and like space rock. (even though none of the lyrics have anything to do with space) Although if you are new to Floyd I would recommend DSOTM over this one; I can imagine that parts of this would be a bit overwhelming without any previous exposure.

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