WISH YOU WERE HERE

After the commercial boom of "The Dark Side Of The Moon", Pink Floyd returned to produce progressive music dilated, liquid, sleepy, following the intuition they had with "Atom Heart Mother". In this case, the album doesn't have an entire-sided suite, but cleverly, a mini-suite that repeats itself without too many variations at the beginning and end of the Lp. It's the famous "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", an atmospheric suite, slow, very evocative, almost ambient-music, based on Wright's keyboards.

The first part of the suite is the highlight of the album, it opens with a carpet of synths that grows up the volume slowly, and explodes when Gilmour's guitar arrives, which touches a first climax of the piece; then returns a moment dominated by the sleepy synth played by Wright, and then kick off a more aggressive piece of guitar, after which Waters' voice arrives, doubled, because it is not suitable for such a solemn and epic piece. The musical score is actually very simple, it's a melodic rock song, linear, verse-chorus, with an epic breath. Pink Floyd's masterpiece is in transforming it through production into a suite, dilating its melodic lines to the maximum, and making them play alternately by Wright and Gilmour, then by waters singing, to conclude with a splendid sax solo (the faithful Dick Parry). Rating 9+.

"Welcome to the Machine" impresses with the use of synths and tape effects percussively, so much so that drums are in fact lacking, accompanied by acoustic guitar. Wonderful singing by Gilmour. Again, the melody is quite simple, and the masterpiece is once again in the sonic guise that PF give to the song in terms of arrangement and futuristic sound. The music is slow and dilated. synths have hardly been played in such a "total" way, able to fill the whole piece with sound, melody and rhythm, without needing anything else, and making it rock. In closing, Pink Floyd cheat, and invent machine noises and crowd sound just to prolong the piece and the side. Rating 8.

Side B opens with "Have a Cigar", which has a great beginning, between bass spin and synths and guitars, which immediately creates an epic and at the same time obsessive climate. The voice of folksinger Roy Harper gives the song an intensity that is lacking in the band's vocalists. With this track continues the criticism of the music industry that, together with the nostalgia of Syd Barrett, constitutes the conceptual node of the album (all the lyrics are written by Waters). The song is powerful and well- crafted, but it lacks a melodic variation, since it stays all the time on the same tone, and only Gilmour's solo avoids making it repetitive. Finally, it is fortunately truncated suddenly (otherwise it would have been long- Rating 8.

"Wish You Were Here" is perhaps Pink Floyd's most famous song, and it's again a simple song, even undeveloped, linear, because it lacks a chorus, and after the rhythmic progression of two verses returns to the basic chords. What makes it beautiful is the hypnotic tour of the guitar and the strength of the singer (Gilmour) that then resumes in a very powerful and energetic way, but in fact soon fades into the background music, leaving the feeling that Pink Floyd haven't found a way to add more sung pieces to the music. The piece ends by fading, while at the same time you hear a loud wind noise with which the second part of SOYCD begins. Rating 8+.

"Shine on You Crazy Diamond" reprise also lasting around 13 minutes. The beginning has a choral progression that is missing at the first part and that becomes quite rhyme and aggressive, then comes the guitar round that leads to the sung part, quite similar to that of the first part, but here they repeat only once verse and chorus , so that the music is not too photocopy of the first part, and so begins variation on the theme, in fact a choral instrumental jam, led by Wright, the dominator of the album, then comes the initial melody, then the track fade away. Rating 7,5/8.

The album has the remarkable merit of maintaining from beginning to end a solemn, epic, and at the same time vaguely obsessive and threatening atmosphere, with a music that further dilates the melody working on the arrangement and that has plucking, progressions more exciting, where voice and music reach a good climax. Overall, it also results in a sometimes long-lived work, and containing relatively little musical material, which is repeated and amplified and dilated and subjected to variations to arrive at a satisfactory album duration. It is a masterpiece of production, sound and arrangement, more than a masterpiece of creativity, but nevertheless it remains a real masterpiece, also because studied in detail and without any really weak moment.

Rating album: 9+ (average 8,25). Real masterpiece. Five Stars.