THE ENDLESS RIVER

It's a very difficult thing to do an honest review of a band whom I have held in such reverential esteem for such a long period of time. The very first time I got stoned, the person I was getting high with pulled out this rather psychedelic L.P and said " you gotta listen to this ". It was 1969 and Ummagumma had just been released and from that moment on in my altered state of consciousness I knew I had found " Sanctuary ". I say that because the music took me to beyond any place I could ever have imagined, and the Sanctuary was that I knew that I could return there simply by buying that L.P and playing it whenever I needed to escape there again. As I got older and Pink Floyd released more albums my love for this band increased and it would seem that they could do no wrong. Then, just as it seemed this was going to go on forever, life caught up with them and Roger left the band. It appeared to be just a minor hiccup at first because the next couple of albums without Roger were on par with the best Pink Floyd had turned out previously. Then the inevitable happened. The drought. Those long lean years with nothing original being released. Just those endless re-releases and best of albums that all dying bands do. Still I kept the faith. Hoping one day there would be one last album. Rick Wright died. I cried for weeks playing his solo albums with the realization that there would definitely never be any new Pink Floyd music. To fill a hole I listened to all the tribute bands and got quite a lot of satisfaction for a few years just listening to how some very talented artists treated my beloved Pink Floyd songs. But as good as some of them were, it was just not Pink Floyd. Then earlier this year 2014 rumors that there was going to be a new Pink Floyd album. A teaser track released " Louder Than Words " And so it came to pass. The Endless River. A secret cache of unreleased bits not used on The Division Bell album, put on a defibrillator and magically bought back to life with all the skill Dave Gilmour, the band and production crew could muster. At first I didn't like it. I actually hated it. I looked at the track list and saw so many short tracks. On an album with 18 tracks 9 of them are less than 2 minutes long. So there is no having this on the Ipod and having it set to shuffle music because the chances are you are going to get a very short song that really means nothing and is over before you get into it. To enjoy this album you MUST play the whole album through, only then will you get the full enjoyment of it. Then all those short tracks blend in together seamlessly forming what seems to be a 40 minute song. All in all it's just another brick in the wall and this album will be remembered by Pink Floyd fans as such. A word of warning for anyone thinking of buying the DVD of this album. 90% of the DVD is a blank screen with the title of the song being played in white letters across the screen. The music is 5.1 SURROUND and perfect. Right at the end there's some video footage and still pics of the band but they are what looks to be from a cctv placed in the corner of the recording studio. I found this to be very annoying and spoils the whole thing. There are however some very precious images and video of Rick Wright playing what was obviously all those years ago. This was the only redemption for this DVD.