Pink Floyd The Name Says It All (The Division Bell - Pink Floyd)

Name: The Solid Grey

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Product:	The Division Bell - Pink Floyd
Date:	17/03/02 (791 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Really great relaxing music

Disadvantages: none

The Division Bell is the second studio album recorded after Roger Waters left, its more commercial than their earlier offerings, but it stands up as one of the best, and pretty much signalled a return to form.

~~The story so far~~
Pink Floyd began their recording life in 1967, a quartet made up of Roger Waters, Rick Wright, Nick Mason, and Syd Barrett. A year later Syd Barrett became too unreliable and was replaced by Dave Gilmore. In 1979 Roger Waters became too arrogant and demanded that Rick Wright leave (saying he wasn't pulling his weight in the band) after the completion of The Wall album.1983 and the band had all but split, in 1987 Nick Mason and Dave Gilmore came together to do another Pink Floyd album (solo ventures just weren't as successful). The record company had little faith in the two and so Dave and Nick went to lengths of paying the recording costs themselves, Rick Wright rejoined the band, a live album was released in 1988, and then The Division Bell album, in 1994.


~~The Music Of Pink Floyd~~
The band have a fairly unique sound, generally speaking its not the kind you'd dance to. Its extremely good, well sounded and the lyrics are well written and true to life. Its more experimental (well at the beginning of their recording career anyway), the music is varied, and invariably good, its more the kind of music you'd sit back to listen and relax to, its very meaningful and, well........ you really have to listen to it. Their best known song is probably Another Brick In The Wall - part 2, as every school kid will know (everybody sing - we don't need no education......).

~~The Division Bell~~
So, The Division Bell album is one of the best, the cover is the most striking since the Dark Side of The Moon album, (the covers on their albums are all very distinctive, one even having a picture of a cow on it). The music and lyrics are mostly written by Dave Gilmore, (who also wrote most of the pr
evious album), its been suggested that some of the songs were directed at Roger Waters (who hated the fact the band continued without him and is still bitter about it), looking or listening to the lyrics, you can see why,

'...........Because there'll be no safety in numbers When the right one walks out of the door.' (Rick Wright, perhaps?)

'So I open my door to my enemies
And I ask could we wipe the slate clean
But they tell me to please go f**k myself
You know you just can't win'

(Lost For words)

~~The Track listing~~

Cluster One
What Do You Want From Me
Poles Apart
Marooned
A Great Day For Freedom
Wearing The Inside Out
Take It Back
Coming Back To Life
Keep Talking
Lost For Words
High Hopes

Listening to the album, I felt that it was clean and fresh, just the feel of it, the songs give the feeling of sadness, What Do You want From Me, and Keep Talking, seem to be about a relationship that isn't working anymore, A Great Day For Freedom is a
song that fits in perfectly and ties in with the continuity of Pink Floyd songs (referring to the wall), High Hopes is a brilliant piece of music and has great words that conger up all kinds of images, its a very meaningful album, some tracks are just music, which is of course, very nice to listen to. Take It Back, and Coming Back To Life are quite up beat songs, so its quite balanced. I think its true to say that this is what they should have been doing before, but its taken a while for them to get round to it, its an improvement on the last album, and as I said it feels very fresh and clean.

A live album was released not long after this called Pulse, and had many songs from the album on it, which is why I bought this album, I have it on tape, although I'd recommend you get the CD, probably costing £11.99.

Stephen Hawking is thanked on the inlay card and possibly speaks o
n the album, (well it sounds like him) also is Douglas Adams (the now sadly deceased author of The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy), apparently when Pink Floyd had finished the album they were stuck for a title, and sitting around with their friend Douglas Adams one day, they offered to donate some money to Douglas's favourite charity if he gave them a title, so he said, The Division Bell, which, as he said, was in the lyrics anyway.

Its a pretty good album, and I'd wholly recommend it, I just wish they'd release something new soon (nothing new for 8 years is too long).

Buy it, enjoy it, and tell your friends.


The Solid Grey

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