MEDDLE

This is Meddle, the begining of the new Pink Floyd, which is more progressive, and less psychedelic. Meddle contains the epic echoes, one of Pink Floyd's biggest achievements, and 5 other songs, most of them being fairly unknown to most people. This is the follower of Atom Heart Mother, which did also excist out of one 23 minute epic and several shorter songs, it was although far more experimental.

The first song is "One Of These Days", a song based around a powerful bassline. The song contains great keyboard playing of Richard and great slide guitar of David. The song is very powerful and fun to listen to, but it's far from being a masterpiece.

The next song is "A Pillow Of Winds", which is excactly the opposite of "One Of These Days", it's very mellow, has relaxing vocals, smooth acousting guitar picking and typical Floydish slide guitar. Many people don't really seem to care about this song, it's just one of the few shorties of Meddle, I don't think of it that way at all, it's a beautiful song.

The next song is "Fearless", it basically is a nice song, It's got a nice riff, catchy vocals, nothing wrong with it right? Well...in fact there are some problems here, I don't have a clue why, but we here singing football supporters on the background, not a big deal, but it makes the song feel like it goes about nothing.

After the dissapointment of Fearless it's time for jazz with "San Tropez". San Tropez is a nice song, it's a pleasant listen, very smooth, very jazzy, but still very Floydish. The songs has some nice piano parts and slide solo's, yes, this album has lots of slide guitar. A nice song which shows Pink Floyd's wide musical skills.

The next song is "Seamus" (also known as "Mademoissele Nobs". It's a simple blues song with a dog barking into the microphone. A pretty funny experiment, but not very interesting except for the dog.

The final song of the album is the epic "Echoes", often seen as one of Pink Floyds true masterpieces. The song starts out with high piano notes through a Leslie speaker. Soon the piano is joined by soft guitar playing of David Gilmour and the song goes on for a while. After about three minutes there are some very mellow vocals, it's sung very lovely, but I don't have a clue what the lyrics are about. After the first verse there is one of the most catchy bridges ever, very lovely. After the second verse we get to hear one of David's best solo's, a haunting piece of guitar playing. After the solo a simplyfied version of the bridge is played, a couple of years later this riff was simply copied by Andrew Lloyd Webber for the soundtrack of Phantom At The Opera. After this we reach the funky part, it's a jam based around a funky guitar and organ riff. David plays some of the finest licks I've ever heard at the funky part. After the lovely jam we hear evil, dark sounds that go on for a while, a while too long if you ask me. After that we get some fine arpeggio's of David Gilmour and a reprise of the vocal part. A lovely song, though maybe a bit too long.

A good album, though far from the band's best.