New Pink Floyd Album 'The Endless River'

[Hadrian]

For me it is the best of the three studio albums they released after Waters left. They released it without any further need to prove anything to anyone, without any need to have radio hits or to bother with any concert promotion. As such, it is their most honest record. The Endless River is quintessential post-1985 Pink Floyd: it is all about music, the sound of it all. It sounds like their old records, and as such it is a clear demonstration of what their (Gilmour, Wright, Mason) contribution really was. It lacks lyrics (almost completely), and there is no concept or narrative - which is also a form of (unintended) demonstration, this time of what Waters' contribution had been. Without any desire to oversimplify, essentially they were the music and he was the lyrics & concepts - and these two components working together made those fantastic albums of the 1973-79 period which had it all. By the way Roger Water's public reading of his poem Why Cannot the Good Prevail to the concert audience is to me, in a similar fashion, quintessential Roger Waters.

[danielcaux]

Good point. And you know what else is missing from the Endless River? Songs! Not just lyrics, but the actual musical song structures where the lyrics are placed over. Gilmour and co. were great at coming up with intros, jams and outros, as this album proves, but not very good at crafting memorable song structures. That's was clearly Roger's role in the 70s, coming up with the actual song structures and the letting the musical guys embelish them. That was their winning formula.

[AndrewJFisher]

You know, ol' Rog once said:
"The only thing that is important is whether it moves you or not. Nothing else is important at all."

It moved me, so I consider it a good record.
I don't care about production or songs, I care about it as a whole.
And, as a whole, it was pretty good.


That's my two cents.

Roger is also quoted as saying that he met a woman in a shop once who told him that The Final Cut really moved her(it was especially relevant because she'd had family in World War II I think) and he decided that's what really counts.