C/D : Pink Floyd "The Division Bell"

If A Momentary Lapse of Reason is Pink Floyd at their most dad rock, The Division Bell feels like some kind of post-dad rock stage. I think that the tour for this album and the subsequent release of Pulse did rehabilitate the band for a new generation of listeners.

revisiting momentary was really depressing, i might be alone in this but i think it sounds even less like pink floyd than the final cut. "sorrow," "terminal frost," "one slip" all great though. "learning to fly" never did much for me

also feels like it goes on forever. which tbf so does the division bell but i like it in that case

If you sync up The Division Bell to the Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan movie "You've Got Mail," the many coincidences that arise are amazing.

― blonry, Friday, April 15, 2005 2:57 PM (fifteen years ago)

that extended slide guitar solo that runs the second half of High Hopes is really epic & tastefully done. that whole song is nice, actually.

otherwise, this album sucks.

this album rules, it’s sooooo beautiful

I really like the idea of it being beautiful, and if I could just get past the stigma of well... Pink Floyd in the 90's (which really shouldn't preclude my embracing it, especially in my older and more impartial stage of life), I daresay I could come round.

i hated it for many years so i get it! but i have embraced the corn

Is there a name for the kind of melody you get in the chorus of 'A Great Day For Freedom', where you get the general 'Just One Cornetto' / 'When Girls Get Together' vibe?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22z03ZQtpe8

The only thing I hear in common between those three melodies is maybe starting on a chord suspension?

The best thing about The Division Bell is that Gilmour and co. have their confidence back, there isn't the paralyzing fear that departing six inches from the Floyd template is going to lose them their audience. So they can do something as sunny as "Coming Back to Life", which unfortunately also sounds like a lifeless bedroom recording with fake drums that goes on for 6 minutes.
The worst thing is all these tiresome quarrelsome lyrics playing with the audience: "is it about Roger? Maybe it could be...!" Also it's twenty minutes longer than A Momentary Lapse of Reason and probably even slower. My pick from this era is the Pulse version of "A Great Day For Freedom", it gets the epic feel without running it into the ground.

I stan mildly for this album and Reason mostly because they're... as good as Pink Floyd ever were imo? Which is fine

this is one of those records I really want to like better than I do, and I keep coming back to it, and saying, it's fine, but I keep hoping it will seem super great

mighty challops. i appreciate the take.

xp

It's not really a champ, Pink Floyd are this band of many phases and eras that have periods that are over-romanticized (Syd), overlooked (soundtracks), overpraised (Dark Side), inexplicably popular (The Wall), vilified (Dave-era). It all sounds of the same level of quality to me with the exception of The Final Cut which is possibly the worst album I've ever heard

*challop ha

xpost have you not heard Pros & Cons Of Hitchhiking then?

while it's true that people flog the romance of the Syd era, Piper remains one of the most astonishing displays of genuine songwriting -- virtuosity, I want to say, but the very thing that makes it so appealing is its evident ease, the fluidity of it. it's easy for people to talk the wrong way about Syd, but of Piper one can only say -- what an unparalleled collection of tunes, very hard to overrate

i like it but i really got into pink floyd with momentary lapse of reason then the wall then everything before and finally the final cut which i did not like or any of roger waters solo stuff!

Pink Floyd are this band of many phases and eras

There's a continuity that goes undetected all too often, though, especially between the Syd stuff and everything after. "Oh, it was a completely different band with Syd" - Nonsense! Many different styles and approaches, sure, and they previewed almost all of them on or before their second album. PatGoD is the template.

virtuosity, I want to say, but the very thing that makes it so appealing is its evident ease, the fluidity of it.

For me the Syd era is characterized by the jarring stiffness of the ensemble and their trepidatious and tentative approach to improvisation and musical exploration, which they retain afterwards to an extent. Mason's approach on Nick's Boogie/Saucerful of Secrets' is intuitive to the point that it almost sounds like he's never played the drums before. Fluidity is something I feel Gilmour introduces, at least in a musical sense.

I think it's Syd's internal rhyming that creates the jolly quality of his songs, or the lightness, and his words tend to dictate the meter of the music. I agree that this material does not lay bare the effort involved the way the post-Syd, pre-Dark Side material does.

Piper one can only say -- what an unparalleled collection of tunes, very hard to overrate

hard agree there

PUBLIUS

With Syd's songs, where the music is set to borrowed words instead of his own lyrics, like 'Chapter 24' or 'Golden Hair', the songwriting doesn't have that same sprightly feel.

I think for some, you might be able to dig this one more if you forget about the pedigree of the brand name and just think of it as a Gilmour record. Really even including the Wall - I kinda think Floyd as a working band ended sometime after the tour for Animals.

I do think they got a bit more of the Floyd feel on this one compared to any of the other post Animals records, probably helping that they pretty much jammed it out together as a trio.

"Wearing the Inside Out" I think has a twinkle of ye' old 60s twee in that 90s production myself.

I have to revisit the Syd era, I think. I haven’t listened to Saucerful since I was a teenager. It was when I was a teenager too that I realized that the songs on The Wall I liked (loved, even) were the two Gilmour singles.

Meddle is my favourite album by these guys and Echoes my favourite song— “San Tropez” is a rare instant of their novelty songs working for me

It’s interesting that Deflatormouse feels this band had a template… I can’t think of any other band that I view more as “five different bands” depending on what era and what songwriter was at work. Gilmour records are to me like Peter Gabriel records. I need to check out the most recent one too I think

Right, the only way the view of "five different Floyds" makes sense to me is through a lens of songwriting, which is possibly the wrong approach (at least in my view).

Maybe the 2nd album is the template, rather than the first. For one thing, Saucerful is the first time there's some underlying question of 'how are we going to fill a whole album?' at the core of a Pink Floyd LP, and that continues through everything up to Atom Heart Mother at the very least, probably later- Wish You Were Here for example still has a sense of that. Songwriting doesn't seem to have come easily or naturally to any of them except Barrett and *maybe* Wright (to whom it doesn't seem to have come frequently).

I agree with everything earlnash says pretty much, and again i think it's largely the lyrics by Polly Samson that give it the feel of a Gilmour album to the extent that it feels like a Gilmour album.