Pink Floyd - The Wall
Released in 1979
Track Listing
In The Flesh?
The Thin Ice
Another Brick In The Wall Pt. 1
The Happiest Days Of Our Lives
Another Brick In The Wall Pt. 2
Mother
Goodbye Blue Sky
Empty Spaces
Young Lust
One Of My Turns
Don't Leave Me Now
Another Brick In The Wall Pt. 3
Goodbye Cruel World
Hey You
Is There Anybody Out There?
Nobody Home
Vera
Bring The Boys Back Home
Comfortably Numb
The Show Must Go On
In The Flesh
Run Like Hell
Waiting For The Worms
Stop
The Trial
Outside The Wall
The hard thing about trying to review
The Wall is that there is quite a bit of fluff on it, but all of that fluff is "important" to the whole "story" of the album. However, Pink Floyd is really good with working with fluff. Take
Meddle for example -- the whole damn album is fluff and it's pulled off pretty well(but I'll save that for later~). The thing about
The Wall though is that its fluff can get
really monotonous. In fact, the whole album is monotonous, and that's not helped by the fact that Roger Waters is taking the whole thing seriously. For reference, I bolded all of the songs that I dub "fluff". Not all songs up there are fluff in their entirety -- songs like "
Comfortably Numb" start off as a normal song then slowly turn into fluff by continuously jamming to take up space before fading out. And all of those noises that make the album's songs segue are completely unnecessary and sometimes are just annoying. They break the flow, really. If
The Wall was condensed down more than it originaly was, it would definately be worth the listen.
Most of the enjoyment that
The Wall tries to bring you actually comes from the worthless social commentary it presents(Well, it may not be social commentary exactly, but...). It's interesting stuff(Well, that's actually kind of pushing it, but...) but the casual listener might not catch all of that, and without the worthless social commentary, all that's left to hold the album up is its music, which about 30 minutes of that is fluff. (Yeah, back on that again.) Looking past the fluff though, all the other songs are well made and are probably worth the listen. Sure, it can get long-winded, but Floyd had always had the ability to piece together great melodies that try -- and usually succeed -- in hooking you in. If you can force yourself through the entire 80 or so minutes of it, you probably won't emerge feeling rewarded or fulfilled or anything, but you might emerge knowing that you just heard some weird musical anomaly that tricks you into thinking it's good when it's actually really flawed.
And there's really not much more to say about
The Wall. I'm not trying to half-ass this either. It's... an okay piece of music. Long, tedious, but really good in some parts. Nothing special, and definately not as good as other people make it out to be. It's a confused piece. A little stone recorded during the decline of a band -- something that might have been a gem if the band were in top form and not bitching at each other. Who knows what it might've turned into.
Interesting cuts include: "
Another Brick In The Wall Pt. 2", "
Mother", "
Young Lust", "
One Of My Turns", "
In The Flesh", "
Run Like Hell", "
Waiting For The Worms", "
The Trial"
6/10