THE WALL

What an overrated album. That about sums my thoughts about this album up. It isn't a directly bad album, but it isn't good either, and it certainly isn't the masterpiece that quite a few name it. What it is to my ears, is a boring set of songs that at times hints of greatness but mostly just sound forced and created as vehicles for the story line. Waters clearly had a great concept in mind, at least I find the story told in the lyrics pretty good, but it's poorly executed. Perhaps if he had included the other band members more in the songwriting, this could have been a new DSOTM? (Although that's unlikely, as some of my concerns, such as sterile, cold, production were a thing of the late 70s.)

The main problem is all the vast amounts of filler. Some tracks are extremely dull and do nothing but tell the story line over simple melodies. I can name the better tracks on one hand: Mother, Hey You, Comfortably Numb and Run Like Hell (I only include this one because of Gilmour's splendid strat riff...) The others mostly bore me except for a few better parts (such as the creepy atmosphere in the 'Another Brick' tracks, I think it sets the scene for the whole school criticizing thing pretty well), but those are few. The sound of the album is also an issue for me. The whole thing sounds mostly uninspired, the instruments aren't played with any sort of feeling except for a few solos. The album sounds sterile and cold, and it lacks dynamics for the most part. This only adds to the boredom of it for me. There are however a few highlights (and not surprisingly all of these involve Gilmour in some way); 'Comfortably Numb' is a pretty great track. The end guitar solo is a real killer, and the vocal alternations between Waters and Gilmour fit the concept (doctor talking to Pink) very well. If only the rest had stood up to this quality!

I give The Wall two stars. Really it's more like two and a half, as it has its decent moments and one truly great track. But 90% of it is just really boring filler material. From a lyrical perspective I see that the so called filler convey most of the story line, but for me great lyrics are nearly nothing if backed by weak music.