Pink Floyd-A Momentary Lapse of Reason
Track Listing:
1. Signs of Life
2. Learning to Fly
3. The Dogs of War
4. One Slip
5. On the Turning Away
6. Yet Another Movie
7. A New Machine pt. 1
8. Terminal Frost
9. A New Machine pt. 2
10. Sorrow
Best Track: Learning to Fly
Well it's no Dark Side but it doesn't deserve it's bad rep either...
Pink Floyd seemed finished after the effectively Waters solo record that was
The Final Cut, but instead Gilmour, Mason and to an extent Wright restarted Floyd to make
Momentary Lapse. Considered by many Floyd fans to be horrid and an insult to the great Pink Floyd catalogue, this album tends to get a pretty bad wrap. But to be honest does it really deserve this criticism?
The first song is the instrumental Signs of Life. It opens with the flowing water at the start which then leads on to an ambient-ish synth part before ending in a subdued Gilmour guitar part. Quite a pleasant song, but probably not the best to open an album with. It's just a bit too unremarkable. Ideally you'd want the next song, Learning to Fly, to start off proceedings. Learning immediately hits with it's soaring slashes of guitar, which add to the effective and strong lyrics.
One thing about
Momentary Lapse is that the record has energy with it. Even though The Dogs of War and One Slip aren't the best songs here at least they don't get bogged down. Dogs of War shows Gilmour trying to be all angry and demonstrative but really only Waters was ever good at that. On the Turning Away is another anthem like Learning to Fly, but it lacks the guitar slashes that predominate latter. It instead relies on effective backing vocals which background Gilmours airy voice beautifully.
The worst songs on the album are the double whammy of A New Machine pt 1 and 2. The sound is harsh, too sudden and ugly, with the empty gaps between Gilmour's shrieks awkward and pretty useless. I'm not sure whether Gilmour and co. trying to revive the gritty atmosphere of
Animals here but if they were they failed dramatically. And then just to rub salt into the wound (or ears rather?) they decide to just repeat about 40 seconds of it a second time. Not smart, not smart at all...
Mind you in between the two abominations there is the (second) lovely instrumental, Terminal Frost. Starting off with a nice piano line, assumedly from Wright, and a bit more soaring guitar from Gilmour, the instrumental then morphs into a superb saxophone solo. Truly brilliant, the sax solo is moving but not wanky like you sometimes get with solo's from this instrument. It's very close to best track here, which is rare as generally I consider most instrumentals filler to the vocal tracks (unles of course the artist goes by the name of Brian Eno
)
So certainly by no means a bad album. Granted there a few poor tracks and only one two true good ones but there really is no real problems here. It gave back Pink Floyd energy in their music as well as a bit more positivity after three generally dark albums. Certainly if you enjoyed stuff before Waters became too dominant then you shouldn't find this a bad album.
11/15