Pink Floyd – Album by Album

Author:Stephen Palmer

Another year, another Pink Floyd book, this one examining their career album by album. Given the band’s story has already been told many times, this new title doesn’t really add anything new in the factual sense, so really its raison d’etre is the critical look at each record. The author is firmly in the Gilmour/Wright camp, particularly carrying a flame for the latter, who to be fair was an integral part of the band’s sound until the mid seventies. He is rather less keen on Waters, and unsurprisingly this taints his view of the later albums. He dismisses The Wall as merely ok and nothing special, and positively hates The Final Cut, and contends that AMLOR is a better album than both, while also displaying a strange affection for the very mediocre The Division Bell. Not a view I can concur with I’m afraid, but there you go. His looks at each album are decently written without being exceptional, and he does try to give his own slant on the music, which is to be commended even if it’s sometimes a bit lightweight and has a few annoying factual errors which rather stick out like the proverbial sore thumb to the hard core fan like myself. All in all, this is surely one for the relative newcomer discovering the band’s catalogue for the first time and wanting an overview of their canon, rather than the long standing devotees who will already be familiar with most of the content here and have their own opinions.

Length of Read:Short

Might appeal to people who enjoyed…

Other Floyd books, the best being Mark Blake’s Pigs Might Fly and Nick Mason’s Inside Out, although presumably this short book isn’t intended to compete with those comprehensive works.

One thing you’ve learned

Aimed at newbies perhaps attracted to the band by the recent spate of reissues after the sale of the back catalogue, rather than ageing hippies!

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