Possibly my joint second favourite Floyd album after Dark Side and for me, despite the claims of the Pompeii version, contains the definitive version of Echoes. I find the whole album puts me in the mood of a perfect summers day and I especially like San Tropez even though some may consider it filler.
It took me many months to realise that the cover art was an ear .
Echoes is my favourite song if the Floyd. Therefore this album does well for me! I enjoyed watching it being played live by David Gilmour! The middle section of Echoes is something else! Oh yes. That guitar!!
I cannot give this album full marks because of the awful football chanting and Seamus. The only really superb songs are the first and last, but I still listen to it without skipping, so it's very good.
3/5.
Last edited by PublicImage on Tue Dec 30, 2008 4:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I can't quite recall when I first got the album. I'm pretty sure it was a cassette, though.
I'd only ever heard "Fearless" on Works before, when I worked at the same radio station that Animals covered me for; but I owned a VHS copy of Pompeii at that time and was interested in hearing what the studio versions of "Echoes" and "One Of These Days" sounded like.
A Pillow Of Winds and San Tropez were welcome surprises, though Seamus made me think "that's just Mademoiselle Nobs with lyrics." *shrug*
I think it's definitely the album where they finally found themselves as a band, though.
I cannot really add anything insightful past Echoes=Masterpiece etc etc.
It is one of the few albums that I own where the filler is enjoyable the filler as well as the main. It is interesting (particularly of the early songs) how many songs were recorded onto an album, yet never played live. Out of the 6 songs here, only 2 (One of these Days and Echoes) were played live (to my knowledge) unless you want to count Mademoiselle Nobs at Pompeii as Seamus live, which I don't. For this reason, it is amazing that so many people hold this album in such high regard. As they should.
This is possibly my favorite PF album to fall asleep to. Every track is fun and soothing. They really found them self with this one, and it should not have come to anybody's surprise that DSotM was right around the corner. A solid four, just barely below five.
Seamus and San Tropez can be a bit annoying, but aren't bad so i can still listen to the album fully without skipping both. I think that the other tracks all rule.
Very good album. I love the opening and closing tracks. The middle ones, I like rather than love. I don't even mind Seamus. I like playing it to my dog because it confuses him a bit
Whoever votes five is incredibly lenient as a critic, and most likely biased towards Pink Floyd. It is musically incoherent, doesn't have a particularly strong flow (which is a prerequisite for anything rated four and above), and has a few weak songs. Not necessarily bad songs, but nevertheless, they are not good enough to compare with Echoes and OOTD. A great album requires EVERY song to be absolutely superb, not just two.
PublicImage wrote:Whoever votes five is incredibly lenient as a critic, and most likely biased towards Pink Floyd. It is musically incoherent, doesn't have a particularly strong flow (which is a prerequisite for anything rated four and above), and has a few weak songs. Not necessarily bad songs, but nevertheless, they are not good enough to compare with Echoes and OOTD. A great album requires EVERY song to be absolutely superb, not just two.
Music taste is a really subjective thing Roggaaaah! One person's fiver is another person's threeeeer
Yes, it is, but I don't see how somebody can the album five stars if the flow is so inconsistent. It's a good collection of songs, but five stars should be reserved for those albums that are whole bodies of work (e.g. Dark Side of the Moon and Kid A) rather than collections of songs lacking any cohesion or consistency (e.g. The Bends and A Saucerful of Secrets).
I like the album. I really do. But I don't think it deserves five stars. It jumps from an incredible starter to something mellow, which is fine in theory, but it wasn't done as well as Pink Floyd are capable of. A Pillow of Winds is a good song, but it strikes me as being distinctively average compared to other Pink Floyd songs with similar mellow sounds (e.g. Breathe).
There is a massive difference between 'great' and 'five stars'.
Eclipse wrote:Music taste is a really subjective thing Roggaaaah!
He knows that.
Well, you are right Roger, but, I am speaking from a Floyd fans point of view here, not from some objective music critic
point of view. And to me, this album has 3 really good tracks, one not so bad and pretty funny and one that is an absolute
favourite among everything they've created. To give an album that has Echoes on 4 stars is blasphemy (to me).