Because I never thought of myself as a Pink Floyd fan, it has been possible for me to sidestep the group’s many controversies and achieve the improbable feat of merely enjoying the music.
Can it be Pink Floyd without Roger Waters, Richard Wright or Syd Barrett?
Yawn.
Barrett and Wright are dead, and Waters alive but long departed. David Gilmour says The Endless River, culled and repurposed from the 1994 Division Bell sessions, will be Pink Floyd’s final album, and as such, it achieves more than I might have imagined. The primarily instrumental album honors Wright’s often unrecognized contributions, and the final song (containing the album’s only vocal) provides a pleasant coda.
Much of it sounds familiar, and drummer Nick Mason addresses this point in a Rolling Stone interview.
It does sound like you’re drawing little bits out of the band’s whole history.
It’s a very funny thing. You sit down to play and it’s a blank canvas, and somehow you end up retreating into familiar phrases, or in my case, familiar drum fills, no matter how hard you try. Eventually you settle into it. You realize, “This is what we like doing. This is what feels comfortable. Carry on.”
The Endless River will not be an album I return to, again and again. However, it was a worthwhile investment, understated and elegant, because it made me happy to listen. Life needn’t be transcendent. Affirmation is enough, sometimes.
