I can’t stop listening to this stunning song. David Gilmour – possibly the most stylish guitarist of all time, and the other brilliant creative mind behind Pink Floyd – is about to realease a new album. I picked up the single from iTunes music store – On an Island. It’s a dreamy, ethereal piece that […]
I can’t stop listening to this stunning song.
David Gilmour – possibly the most stylish guitarist of all time, and the other brilliant creative mind behind Pink Floyd – is about to realease a new album.
I picked up the single from iTunes music store – On an Island.
It’s a dreamy, ethereal piece that sounds, more than anything else, like Obscured by Clouds-era Pink Floyd, that then breaks into some of the most brilliant, classic Gilmour guitar playing I’ve ever heard. It’s one of those songs that almost sounds like a clinic in how to do it, the way I felt listing to Sonny Rollins play a fifteen minute sax solo when I saw him live a few years back. Like you could sit and listen and learn everything you need to know about how to play a perfect solo. It also features stunning backup vocals by David Crosby and Graham Nash, who may be geezers but wow can they still sing.
I was a huge Pink Floyd fan – and still am. But my favortite Pink Floyd isn’t the stuff that sold a bazillion records. I don’t really like Dark Side of the Moon, nor do I much like The Wall. They have great songs on them but they’re not what I consider Pink Floyd’s creative, artistic peaks.
My favorite albums were some of the less massively successful ones; Animals, Meddle, Obscured by Clouds. I tried hard to love the Syd Barret era Floyd, but as brilliant as Barret was, those albums lacked Gilmour’s guitar, and to my ear, that was such a huge component of Pink Floyd’s sound that they never quite stuck with me. They’re great, but I don’t love them.
I stopped listening to Pink Floyd after The Wall. They’d said what they had to say. Waters was spinning off into ego-land and the band had taken on that commercial juggernaut sound, were turning into one of those dinosaur acts that need to stop a while. But I still listen to the old albums, have them all on CD and vinyl. And I love them.
This song has something – something of that old, classic Pink Floyd, something of Gilmour’s first solo album (which I loved when it came out, and wish I could get now, though it’s not yet back in print); and yet it sounds current, not like he simply went back and said I can do that again.. It sounds like that because that sound is David Gilmour.
God I hope the rest of the album – due out next week – is this good.
I knew I had saved that giftcard I got for Xmas for a reason 😉
Best music news I’ve heard in awhile.
Yeah, I heard an advance track from it. Nice to hear those strings in action again, and it’ll probably be the first non-soundtrack disk I’ve actually bought in ages.
Every time I come to your site I get a strange longing for this pub back on the island I used to live on…
You named at least two of my very favorite Pink Floyd cd’s. I probably listened to Meddle a thousand times one summer.
“One of these days, I’m going to chop you into little pieces.”
😀
“The Wall” is a playback soundtrack for my life. But, no, musically, I have to agree. However, I love “Dark Side of the Moon.”
And now that I don’t smoke dope anymore, I’m surprised that I still love “Animals.”
Unfortuneately, I own none of this on CD. I still have my “Wall” album, complete with microscopic marijuana flakes.
C’mon! If there was a better place to clean your dope, I’d like to know.