And all the way back to almost the beginning...
Posted July 17 2011 in The Playlist of Life
Note: As you can see, this was written eleven years ago now, and seven after the album had been released. Everyone expected it to have been the band's final album, until they foisted upon us the piece of pointless nostalgia that went under the banner of their actual swansong on The Endless River, nearly three decades after this album, so anything I say below about it being their last album was, at the time, true. I can't see the future.
The Division Bell - Pink Floyd - 1994 (EMI)
The second Pink Floyd album released without founder member Roger Waters, and the last ever released by the band,
The Division Bell was highly criticised on its release, both on the grounds that it was recorded just to make money, and that the band no longer cared about their music. Although 1987's
A Momentary Lapse of Reason was a little hit-and-miss in places, with perhaps too many standalone instrumentals and not enough full compositions, I found this album to be far superior, and one look at the writing talent and creative process on it is, to me, enough to give the lie to at least the second part of that accusation.
Helmed mostly by, as would be expected, successor to the Floyd throne David Gilmour, the album is not overly guitar heavy, relying a lot on the expressive keyboard work of the late Richard Wright, but is chock-full of meaning and emotion, in a way that the previous album did not seem to be. To my mind,
Division Bell is much more
Final Cut than
Momentary Lapse. It opens, like its predecessor seven years ago, with an instrumental, and indeed similar to that album it's an instrumental that starts very low, with the sound of what could be oars cutting through water, joined by the swirling, almost hypnotic keyboards of Wright, then the sharp, clear piano notes joined by Gilmour's mournful guitar as the tune takes on a slight resemblance to the opening parts to “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”, introducing the first real track, “What Do You Want from Me”, where we can hear Gilmour's voice is in fine fettle, and despite criticism aimed at him I think his guitar work has never sounded better.
The album's main concept is agreed as being one of communication, or the failure to talk, and many of the songs reflect this, including this, as Gilmour snaps
”Should I stand out in the rain?/ Do want me to make a daisy chain for you?/ You're so hard to read!” Great backing vocals on this track, in proper Floyd fashion, help add real atmosphere to the song, and its themes continue in “Poles Apart”, a jangly, almost upbeat track with dark overtones, as Gilmour asks
”Did you know it was all going to go/ So wrong for you?” Much more than
Momentary Lapse I feel each track here is a strong composition, even the two instrumentals, of which “Marooned”, essentially a vehicle for Gilmour's spellbinding guitar playing, is the next, but it's “A Great Day for Freedom” where the ghost of Waters really walks the grooves of this record, as Floyd chart the fall of the Berlin Wall and its aftermath, noting with acid derision how happy everyone was on that night, and how the dream turned, for many, to nightmare very quickly.
”On the day the Wall came down/ They threw the locks onto the ground/ And with glasses high we raised a cry/ For freedom had arrived..../ Promises lit up the night/ Like paper doves in flight.” The initial euphoria of the collapse of Communism and the Eastern Bloc is contrasted sharply with the subsequent wars for independence, racial tensions, ethnic cleansings and social unrest that followed. The song is mostly carried on Wright's lonely piano, tinkling like the fading echoes of the bells of freedom as they recede into memory and the mists of history.
”Now frontiers drift like desert sands/ As nations wash their bloodied hands/ Of loyalty and history/ In shades of grey.” Possibly one of the most honest and factual accounts of the events post-collapse of the Wall, with another sterling solo from Gilmour to end the track, and definitely place this as one of the best on the album.
We get to hear Rick Wright sing for the first time since
Dark Side of the Moon and sadly also the last ever time, as not only was this Floyd's last album together, but Wright died in 2008 of cancer. The melody almost seems cognisant of this (though of course that's not the case), with sad saxophone, dour drums and muted guitar taking “Wearing the Inside Out” along, with again some powerful backing vocals. Even the lyric seems, in hindsight, prophetic:
”My skin is cold to the human touch/ This beating heart/ Not beating much.” Some of Wright's best keyboard work characterises this track too, fittingly, recalling the glory days of
Dark Side and
The Wall. Things speed up then for “Take it Back”, as close to a straight-ahead rocker as there is on the album, while “Coming Back to Life” wins my award for best track on the album, with its slow, sad, agonised guitar opening and its anguished demand
”Where were you when I was/ Burned and broken?/ While the days slipped by/ From my window, watching?” before it picks up and becomes a mid-paced rocker.
“Keep Talking”, emphasising and confirming the central theme of the album, features the sampled voice of Professor Stephen Hawking, adding great weight and gravitas to the track, and putting forward the welcome belief that everything will be all right as long as we continue to talk to each other.
”It doesn't have to be like this/ All we have to do is make sure/ We keep talking.” Words to live by. Rather giving the lie to that however is the sound of a slamming door opening the penultimate track, “Lost for Words”, and mournful keyboards joined by acoustic guitar in a reflective look at life:
”I was spending my time in the doldrums/ I was caught in a cauldron of hate/ I felt persecuted and paralysed/ Thought that everything else could just wait/ While you are wasting your time on your enemies/ Engulfed in a fever of spite/ Beyond your tunnel vision reality fades/ Like shadows into the night.” Samples overlay the track, transmissions and conversations, including the recording of a boxing match, and the reality of the world intrudes to show that though YOU may have seen the light, that doesn't necessarily mean everyone else has, as noted in the end lyric:
”So I open my doors to my enemies/ And I ask could we wipe the slate clean?/ But they tell me to please go and **** myself/ You know, you just can't win!”
Sobering words, and the closer comes in, and indeed fades out, on the distant peals of church bells, evoking both the title and also the line from
Dark Side's track “Home Again” -
”Far away, across the fields/ The tolling of the iron bell/ Calls the faithful to their knees/ To hear the softly spoken magic spells.” In the same way that “Sorrow” closed
A Momentary Lapse of Reason on a sour, morose note, “High Hopes” fades the album out on a less than optimistic thought, leaving us with what is a far superior album to the previous, but as a swansong for Pink Floyd, perhaps a better last track might have been in order? Doesn't detract from the fact that this is a fine ending for a band who had been together through four decades, and produced some of the classic albums of both the seventies and eighties, and who shaped and changed the musical perception of more than one generation.
TRACK LISTING
1. Cluster One
2. What Do You Want from Me?
3. Poles Apart
4. Marooned
5. A Great Day for Freedom
6. Wearing the Inside Out
7. Take it Back
8. Coming Back to Life
9. Keep Talking
10. Lost for Words
11. High Hopes