Pink Floyd - The Division Bell

Discussions about Pink Floyd and Solo Official Album CDs and DVDs.

Rate This Album

5 - Best
28
21%
4
47
35%
3
24
18%
2
24
18%
1 - Worst
10
8%
 
Total votes: 133

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snifferdog
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Re: Pink Floyd - The Division Bell

Post by snifferdog »

What better place to confess than on NPF!
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danielcaux
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Re: Pink Floyd - The Division Bell

Post by danielcaux »

The Slumber Bell, could have made good use of some editing, it's so boring in most places. Keep Talking's attemp at mixing Sorrow with Pigs overstays its welcome, the ballads, Poles and Words, have a nice sound but are uninspired, and the dumb lyrics don't help them either. A Great Day For freedom has a nice intro, but the proper song is so "blah" as is Coming Back To Life*. What Do You Want From Me is a fairly decent opening tune. That said I have to confess I like Take That, I mean Take It Back, yes it sounds like U2 but since The Edge of hairline ripped his guitar sound from Run Like Hell I have no problem thinking of it as a Floydian sounding song. Apart from High Hopes, which is the only post-Floyd song that actually deserves to be a Floyd song, the instrumentals are the highlights here, and they aren't THAT good either, definitely not Grammy worthy. But well, the Grammys are worthless anyway, right?

Great album cover, again.



*Have you heard the song Hunting Bears by Radiohead?** That's the way most of this album should have been done. It would be better and "real-er" that way.


**No? well, let's just say that Gilmour can come with decent pieces/lines of music but seems unable to craft a good coherent song/tune with them; after all that was Roger role in the band back in the day, wasn't it?
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David Smith
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Re: Pink Floyd - The Division Bell

Post by David Smith »

* * *

Would call it an album with some very good bits. The begining does a nice job of building up an atmosphere with the bell making a wee appearance and the legacy of Pink Floyd being expolored and where Dave sits in it etc This lays it down for a fairly dull midsection which is briefly given some energy in Coming Back to Life and Lost For Words which both fetaure beautiful music and vocal performances and then rounded up nicely by High Hopes. Just it doesn't compare to some of the band's prior achievments. Despite the general praise that can be given to half of it, the album simply isn't enjoyable to listen to, which is a shame as the bits that do work show a real promise for better things
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Re: Pink Floyd - The Division Bell

Post by Faint »

"Division Bell" is only one album who's makes me think what album better this or The Wall. :) Just awesome.
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Re: Pink Floyd - The Division Bell

Post by danielcaux »

O--O
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Re: Pink Floyd - The Division Bell

Post by Annoying Twit »

moom wrote:I was not talking about that.

I only commented that without Roger it still can be Pink Floyd, and in my personal opinion , the album proves it. That's it.
+1

AMOLR showed that they could make a Pink Floyd album without Roger. This album proved that they could make a good one.
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Re: Pink Floyd - The Division Bell

Post by Yucateco »

i remember being so disappointed at the first listen. The the last 3 traccks came and made it at least tolerable. It still sounds pretty dull most of the times to me.
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Re: Pink Floyd - The Division Bell

Post by DontLeaveMeNow »

danielcaux wrote:
*Have you heard the song Hunting Bears by Radiohead?** That's the way most of this album should have been done. It would be better and "real-er" that way.


I don't get you on this one. I have heard the song "Hunting Bears" by Radiohead and have the album and it's practically 1 and a half minutes of guitar and some whispering, windy noise in the background, How does that relate to this album? How would it make it real-er?

Or is it just pure sarcasm?
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Re: Pink Floyd - The Division Bell

Post by PooF »

I'm embarrassed to say I like Coming Back to Life, because it always reminds me of Boney M!
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Re: Pink Floyd - The Division Bell

Post by Stilgar »

A good one, quite far from their best, but a good one, surely better than that AMLOR crap... even if the good old "soldiers of Roger" don't admit it, it's a good Pink Floyd record.
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Re: Pink Floyd - The Division Bell

Post by LarsO »

I think it's a good Pink Floyd album. Seemingly my wife's favourite of them, even though I haven't played her the whole catalouge (not even half of it.. she's more of a warm jazz, croner classics, bossa nova, pop kind of girl).

It has a feeling that i like. It's a good album from start to finish, even though it might have been even better without Lost for words wich is a wywh-copy in my opinion. It's a good final album. Far better than if they had quit after A momentary lapse of reason.
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Re: Pink Floyd - The Division Bell

Post by danielcaux »

No, it was not sarcasm. I really think the album is nothing more than mediocre to bad songs made out of little snipets of nice guitar licks. Take for example "Coming Back To Life", without the nice guitar intro, what's there left to like? Nothing! Boring and predictable "by the numbers" song, with absolutely no emotion, it should have been named "Coming Back To Life ...But Not Quite Making it". So the song should have ended at the intro, and then go on with the next track and musical idea, just like "Hunting Bears". Same for "A Great Day For Freedom". "Keep Talking" is just forgery Floyd, a mix of "Sorrow" with "Pigs", nothing new OR interesting, AND overplayed for like 10 minutes. Lost for words? what about these: "I wish you were here!". Perhaps "Flabbergasted" or "Dumbstruck" would have been better tittles.


"High Hopes", "What Do You Want From Me" and even "Take It Back" are decent enough songs though.
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Re: Pink Floyd - The Division Bell

Post by Massed Gadgets »

This is an all right album, listenable enough, and far better than AMLOR, but I agree, it is still mediocre, especially for a PF album. I do like Cluster One. It's why I would have loved to have heard the ambient album they had from these sessions. I imagine it like a whole album of moody jams along the lines of Cluster One, which I think I would like better than the pop rock of TDB. It was also nice to hear Rick singing again, but I wasn't too crazy about the song he composed to sing to. (Incidently, I thought Coming Back to Life was a kind of boring track on TDB, but quite moving and beautifully done on the Meltdown DVD...shows you how performance and production can have quite an effect on a given piece of music...making or breaking it). Overall, I give TDB a 2/5.
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Re: Pink Floyd - The Division Bell

Post by David Smith »

Not really related to the topic, but Bran was hilarious on the last page
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Re: Pink Floyd - The Division Bell

Post by Sonic Destruction »

Unfortunately, I can only give this a two, one of the lowest ratings I can give any Pink Floyd album. I guess that with the person who owns the rights to the name still in the band, it is still legally a Pink Floyd album, regardless of whether the music and lyrics are much good or not. The sad fact is that, in general, they are not much good.

I can remember how excited I was to hear that another Pink Floyd album was coming out in the mid-1990's. I couldn't wait to get it home and give it a spin, but when I got to the end, my reaction was, "Is That It???". :? :? :?

"Cluster One" was a good start, and "What Do You Want From Me?" featured classic (if somewhat derivitive) Pink Floyd music and production, even if the lyrics were dreadful. Unfortunately, it was mainly downhill from there.

"Marooned" was okay, but nothing really special, although it did make me wish they had just dispensed entirely with lyrics and vocals, and just gone for that unreleased ambient project instead. It was nice to hear Rick singing "Inside Out", but the song itself was fairly mundane. "Keep Talking" had more classic Pink Floyd arrangements and playing, but once again, the lyrics were very uninspired, although I did like Gilmour's delivery.

None of the other tracks had anything to recommend them. "Poles Apart", "A Great Day For Freedom", "Take It Back", "Coming Back To Life", "High Hopes" (just so, so overrated by Gilmour himself) and the other track which was so dull I have forgotten the title ... they all might have helped make a Dave Gilmour solo album sound better, but none of them can hold a candle to classic era Floyd.

Regardless of whether or not Roger was in the band, or who played the bass, "The Division Bell" sounds like an album by a band that has simply run out of inspiration and good ideas. If it was a debut album by an unknown band, I wouldn't have touched it. As it is, I haven't played it in years. :( :( :(