Could it be David Gilmour´s On An Island? Love Smile´s lazy Saturday feel.
What´s your favourite? Something by Roger “Giggles” Waters? Rick Wright? One of Syd´s greetings from the end of the world? Bring on the suggestions!
Which is the best Pink Floyd solo album?
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I have a love/hate relationship with Syd’s Madcap Laughs.
Some days I think it is phenomenal.
Other days I hear it as a pile of drivel.
But this one track is always a winner
Octopus
Madcap has some of the most toe-curling/heart rending self-eviscerations on record, the false starts on If It’s In You being especially terrifying to my 15 year old ears. I suspect I thereafter just said no on the basis of that alone. But, together with Barrett, the 2nd LP, there are enough songs to make one knockout. So I’m going for them.
There was a version of that on an episode of Electric Dreams – the one with Steve Buscemi. It was meant to be Syd but was a Top of the Pops-style soundalike. Perhaps they couldn’t get permission .
In the Walk Away Renee book, Hipgnosis’s Storm said that they turned up at Syd’s house to do the shot for the front cover, only to find that without telling them he had painted the floorboards as shown. They went ahead anyway….I reckon it looks much better than if it had been bare boards.
For me there are only two contenders. On An Island (four stars) and The Pros & Cons Of Hitchhiking (five stars).
On An Island has a great overall mood, laid back and acoustic. Spoilt only by Take A Breath, which would have fitted better on one of Gilmour’s first two albums. When it first came out I played it to death (skipping Take A Breath), but I rarely play it these days, except the track The Blue, which I would say is the best Floyd solo track. An ideal spliff and beach song.
Pros & Cons is flawless. Lyrically it’s a more ambiguous concept than either The Wall or The Final Cut, but it fits well alongside those albums and is arguably the best of the three because of its lyrical ambiguity. Musically it’s every bit as cohesive as On An Island, but a very different beast. Clapton’s guitar has never sounded better, imho, And it’s got that rarest of rare things, Waters being genuinely funny. Every time I hear the verses:
“Jump” says Yoko Ono
“I’m too scared and too good looking” I cried
“Go on”, she says
“Why don’t you give it a try?
Why prolong the agony, all men must die.”
and
Fixed on the front of her Fassbinder face
Was the kind of a smile
That only a rather dull child could have drawn
While attempting a graveyard in the moonlight.
I smile. And Jack Palance! And a joint being lit as a prelude to Winnie The Pooh being read aloud to his kids! It’s got everything! I still listen to it a lot, always in its entirety.
I love that album as well. I think we’ve spoken about it on here before.
Pros and Cons is one of my favourite albums ever.
The best solo album by a mile….snoop snoop shoop!
Best Floyd solo album? The Final Cut. Tee hee.
You laugh? You have a point…..
Does anyone think it´s their/his best though? I mean, it´s pretty not very good.
It’s downright stupendous is what it is. (And yet, not their/his best.)
I love The Final Cut. Here’s something I posted elsewhere about it:
“The Final Cut is a Floyd album, but it is also the pinnacle of Roger’s leadership of the band. It does “stick out” though due to its cover, Roger’s dominating voice and overall sound – this is a good thing…
If TFC had been the last Floyd album, it would have left us with an arc of the 16 years from Piper to the Final Cut and it really is a musical journey, each album taking something from the one before and still going somewhere different. Not a bad way to go out. And if it had been the last album, I think it would be more celebrated. There isn’t a record like it.
The alternate to this is AMLOReason Floyd, which seems to trade on being recognisable, instead of artistically getting into your head. The fact that Floyd continued beyond 1984 undermines TFC, as if to say “forget about that album, that wasn’t really Pink Floyd, here’s a more palatable version”. Dave has never had much good to say about The Final Cut, I think that’s a pity.
To echo one of the posts above, as a teenage Floyd fan I was all about post-DSOTM Floyd and very much on Team Roger, now I’m older I find pre-DSOTM is where it’s at. However, I’d love Roger to re-visit TFC, as it was never performed live, I think it could be performed modestly without the props: A run of gigs in the Albert Hall with Orchestra and choir, let the songs shine (and maybe tone down the casual racism towards the Japanese).”
You almost make me want to hear it again. Must. Resist. The. Doctor.
Amused To Death…it’s a brilliant album, and it’s got Jeff Beck on it !!
I’ll go for “Nick Mason’s Fictitious Sports” from 1981, just because I can.
Really it’s Carla Bley’s rock album, which just happens to have Nick on drums. All of ver Floyd released solo albums at that time and I get the impression Nick (who had recently guested on Carla’s “Escalator Over The Hill” project) was stuck for ideas so he just turned the whole thing over to her. All words and music were written by Carla Bley. He and Carla produced. He and Michael Mantler recorded it.
Robert Wyatt is the main featured vocalist, with Karen Kraft also.
Chris Spedding played guitar.
Carla plays keyboards.
Carla’s partner Steve Swallow is the bassist.
Gary Windo played tenor sax, bass clarinet & flute.
The mighty Gary Valente on trombone.
Mike Mantler on trumpet.
Howard Johnson on tuba.
(I’m a Mineralist)
Contains outright silliness and pastiches of both Pink Floyd and Philip Glass.
“Fictitious Sports” gets my vote too
Alexis Korner, no Floydian, played stuff from that on R1.
(Just now my phone suggested Gordian for Floydian… made me smile anyway)
Yes the Floyd pastiche Hot River hits the spot.
The only thing on the entire album that sounds at all Floydian.
The others, at least in those days, all made solo albums that you could immediately tell were by Pink Floyd members.
I recently re-bought Amused To Death second-hand on Amazon, and it turns out that it’s a fancy-schmancy remixed version using some kind of technique. (Get me, all the jargon.)
Anyway, apart from the fact that it now includes HAL from 2001, it *sounds* tremendous, and is now my favourite Waters album.
That said, I love the new one. The lack of wider appreciation is fast-pushing into the ‘overlooked’ category for me.
Pros & Cons for Bargepole also, with honourable mentions for the excellent Amused and Is This The Life.
Always had a soft spot too for Rick Wright’s Broken China.