WISH YOU WERE HERE

Before I go into the main bulk of the review I just want to clarify a few things regarding my general opinion of Pink Floyd. I will admit that they are far from my favorite band, however they have released several masterful albums in their career such as DSOTM, Meddle and Animals, so I have no particular dislike for the band. When I got this album I was expecting it to be up to the same standard as the previously mentioned albums, but after numerous attempts to love this album its flaws have become increasingly apparent to me.

WYWH is a album which contains 2 main types of songs. The first type comes from the 2 title track epics that bookend the album. Part one begins with a very slow ambient instrumental which lasts about 4 minutes. Eventually the song begins to pick up pace and a electric guitar driven instrumental follows which while faster paced seldom goes beyond mid tempo. It is not until the 8th minute that vocals come in.

Now I don't have a problem with ambient music or slower instrumentals, the problem here is how uninspired they are. There is very little of the care and detail that was present in their previous album, so after several minutes of these 2 sections I get totally bored. It amazes me these were the same people that wrote On The Run which was full of texture and creative ideas, but the first 8 minutes here are nothing short of awful

The remaining 4 minutes are much stronger and worthy of the other masterpieces they have created. Here they create a incredibly catchy poppy track with a very strong sax instrumental. The problem is that part 2 of this song contains all the strong elements of this song including a far more diverse instrumental. Therefore the only part of this song that interests me is the sax instrumental which is not worth the 10 minutes of inferior music.

"Welcome to the machine" does to be fair have a good amount of interesting experimental sounds which add a lot of depth to the song. My problem with it is how unpleasant the song is in terms of mood to listen to and how painful Gilmore's vocals are. While a well written song it just comes across of 7 minutes of depression and bad vocals. Objectively this is a excellent song but subjectively I hate it passionately.

"Have a cigar" is for me just a very weak and unimaginative track. Most of it is a plain fast paced rock song with a run-of-the-mill instrumental at the end. Roy Harper takes the vocals, but as with the last song I still find the lyrics and singing irritating. I don't have a problem with negative songs, but it comes across here is spiteful and lacking in any real emotional depth.

The title track is the first song on the album I find to be quite good. There are some interesting sound snippits and unlike the last 2 songs the tone is warm and genuine. There is no Prog in this song but there is a very beautiful instrumental at the end of the song which perfectly leads to the final track.

Part 2 of WYWH is what saves this album from the dreaded 1 star rating. The central pop theme present in part 1 returns, except this time there is some impressive space rock instrumentals which follow on from each other very well.

There is a lot of subjective dislike to this album, but there is also some more objective problems. There is no logical connection at all between the title track elements and the other songs in the middle of the album. This makes this record sound very disjointed and gives the album a poor scene of flow. There is also not as much detail or original ideas present on this album compared to Dark Side or Animals. And finally the subject matter in this album comes across as over the top complaining. I don't mind them stating the problems of the music industry, but to give such a hopeless and bleak picture is totally unnecessary and does not represent the real world.

There is very little for me to enjoy in this album. Its a mystery why this album is loved so much, but that is the nature of music. I doubt this review will change many people's opinion but I hope I have been able to justify why I see this as a low 2 star album.

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