LUCK AND STRANGE

Nine years have passed since 'Rattle That Lock' for David Gilmour to surprisingly decide to come back with 'Luck and Strange' (2024), the fifth album (without considering his collaborations with the electronic band The Orb) of a discography with very few chapters for the more than 45 years of his solo adventure parallel to his responsibilities as Pink Floyd's guitarist. An intimate work, devoid of excessive flourishes and with a somewhat sombre look, which finds Gilmour serene and very much in tune in the conception of the album with his inseparable wife Polly Samson, lyricist and novelist.

Already the opening piano and keyboard chords of Roger Eno and Rob Gentry on the short instrumental "Black Cat" mark the warm and calm temperament of the album, as with the bluesy "Luck and Strange", material rescued and rearranged from jam sessions shared with Richard Wright at the helm of the hammond and electric piano, and whose very interesting extended version forms part of the album as a bonus track, or with the angelic beauty of the folkloric "A Single Spark", or with the acoustic cover "Between Two Points" by the indies 'The Montgolfier Brothers' and the surprisingly solvent and delicate voice of Romany, the musician's daughter, a gem of the album.

The final section of "Luck and Strange" maintains this reflective character, and is occupied by the couple's musings on the inexorability of mortality and doubts about how to deal with it, both in the anguished "Dark and Velvet Nights" and its lilting melody, and in the melancholic ballad "Sings", which moves unhurriedly, embellished by Gilmour's serene voice, and concludes with the growing intensity of "Scattered" and the wink to the unmistakable keyboard of "Echoes", crowned by a penetrating and dense guitar solo with a Floydian stamp.

Just when it seemed unlikely that Gilmour would ever release new material again, he delivers what is perhaps the most established and musically richest work of his career.

Very Good.

3.5/4 stars