THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

On Pink Floyd's 'Dark Side of the Moon' album the band is seriously turning down the psychedelics an drugged out progressive epics. In stead, the band focused on a mature song-writing style and a top-notch production quality, which still stands as one of the best ever. I'm quite amazed about how different this band sounds from the 'Live at Pompeii' recordings made right before this album was recorded. To me that live DVD shows Pink Floyd at its progressive zenith (together with the Atom Heart Mother suite), whereas 'Dark Side of the Moon' feels more like an iconic record for all kind of sentimental purposes that don't mean much to me. In fact, I think the first side of the record is rather slow-paced and even boring. A song like 'The Great Gig in the Sky' doesn't even sound like an effort by this band. The very 'adult' sound to me seems a bit lackluster. Furthermore, much of the choir arrangements, songwriting and use of the saxophone is clearly copied from Graham Nash's debut album of the year before. On side two I can appreciate the bluesy 'Money' and the melancholy song 'Us and Them', but then again; these are no favorites of mine. In the end, I find liking 'Dark Side of the Moon' rather difficult - not for the least because it somehow feels like its expected of me. Given the choice, I would rather have - taken at random - an odd record like Vangelis's 'Hypothesis' than this one. Or Graham Nash's debut for that matter.