DELICATE SOUND OF THUNDER

I see that this live album is rated quite low, and I have to admit that 3 stars is probably the right rating, but how could I forget that this album is recorded during the Momentary Leapse of Reason tour which gave me the opportunity to see them live for the first time.

After the disbanding following The Final Cut I really had no hopes to see the Pink Floyd brand again. After TFC Waters released The Pros and Cons followed by Radio KAOS, Gilmour played on Mason+Fenn album and Wrigh tried an electro-dark adventure with Dave Harris. I thought Pink Floyd were dead and also the release of Momentary Leapse appeared mostly like a follow-up to Gilmour's About Face than like a Pink Floyd album.

But the live show was unforgettable. When they played in my city they cut Shine on you Crazy Diamond to more or less five minutes, and the first good thing of this live album is that the first half of the epic is played entirely.

About the rest, there aren't big differences from what I've seen live and the songs inside and this is a reason why I love this double live. It catches the essence of the show and this is the first quality that a live album must have.

In addition it features one of the best, IMO, version of the second solo of Comfortably Numb and probably the best live version of Run Like Hell. It's a pity that actually the lawsuit between Waters and the rest of the band was still at a peak so they didn't have the authorization to play Waters' songs, missing a big part of Dark Side Of The Moon, but this demonstrated that they had enough material, even without considering A Momentary Leapse Of Reason, to fill a gig.

It covers a period that starts from Meddle (One of These Days) and of course skips Animals and The Final Cut. This is the limit of this album: the Pink Floyd's story is only partially covered and also songs which could have been played without legal problems, like Fat Old Sun, are missing from the tracklist. This is why it's non-essential but it doesn't mean that it's not good.