WISH YOU WERE HERE

This album essentially finds a happy medium between the two albums that came just before and just after it. Dark Side of the Moon was Pink Floyd's deepest electronic exploration, with a surrealist-tinged vocal and lyric style, based around many medium- lengthed tracks. Animals was a guitar-driven piece of social commentary based around three long tracks. Wish You Were Here takes the vivid, surreal feel of Dark Side and the heavily emotional playing of Animals, melding them into the perfect album.

The songs build up perfectly into cathartic moments of emotional outburst. Pink Floyd are the masters of this. You do not listen to this music looking to be blown away by fast guitar solos or technical time changes. They are all about playing the right notes at the right time, and few bands do it better.

One of my favorite things about this album is that the tracks all segue into each other perfectly. As a result you have already adjusted mood by the time the next song starts; there is no rough transition from being in one emotional space and suddenly being forced into another. This album is obviously meant to be digested in a full 45 minute dose, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Listening to this album is an encompassing, visual experience, best done with eyes closed and the lights off.

Dark Side is often acclaimed for its pioneering of electronic sound at the time, but I can't even begin to imagine how they pulled off "Welcome to the Macine" in 1975. To this day I consider it the ultimate fusion of rock-oriented songwriting and experimental electronic sounds.

Thank God Pink Floyd was one of the few 70's prog bands to actually do something dynamic with their vocals. The range of style here is incredible: the machine-like droning of Welcome to the Machine, balladic beauty of Wish You Were Here, the punchy hard rock style of Have A Cigar, its all here, and because of it Pink Floyd has life that no other prog band can hold a candle to.

They might be remembered for Dark Side and The Wall, but spend some time to dig into their music and I think you will find this a hell of an album.

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