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Nov 25, 2014 Pink Floyd By Dan Lucas

Have Pink Floyd, never the most beloved band in certain music critic circles, finally beaten the industry and signed off with an unreviewable album? After all, it is the critic’s duty to devote a record their full attention, to listen closely and examine it in detail. Well, after performing my duties to the best of my abilities, I’d like to declare that it is physically impossible to remain engaged with The Endless River for its entire 18-song, 53-minute duration.

Imagine the following, entirely hypothetical, scenario. In 1994, the three remaining members of Pink Floyd—David Gilmour, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright—enter the studio and have a jam. The jam is seemingly endless, with an incalculable amount of material recorded for The Division Bell, an album that would go on to be a bit unfairly maligned. Much of it is cut, left to gather dust like the board game from Jumanji, until 20 years later, Gilmour and Mason take a nostalgic walk back through the old studio and stumble across the detritus.

Lush and flowing but slow, noodling, and entirely lacking in urgency, The Endless River has an apposite title. The record sounds like a quintessential sub-bonus disc off-cuts collection, like the introduction to “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” if someone forgot to turn it into an actual song. It isn’t until the closing track, “Louder Than Words,” that Gilmour actually sings, and when he finally does, it comes as a jolt to the listener, who had probably forgotten that the album was even running in the background by that point. It’s a shame, because it’s a good song and a suggestion that there is still more to Floyd than simply being great musicians.

The album is a tribute to the late Richard Wright, who was one of the most influential rock keyboard players of the 20th century. Wright was, at times, more composer than rock musician, and he deserves better than this meandering, dithering collection of Muzak. The Endless River belongs not in the pantheon of the great Pink Floyd, but in a hotel elevator. (www.pinkfloyd.com)

Author rating: 3.5/10