Pink Floyd- The Endless River (ALBUM REVIEW)

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A lot of people bag on Yoko on the bogus allegation that she broke up The Beatles. But Polly Samson is a rock ‘n’ roll wife far more deserving of your jeers for her role in transforming Pink Floyd into a big puddle of MOR goo that undercut the very fabric of the band’s rich history of psychedelic exceptionalism.

Longtime Floyd fans already took it with a baseball-sized grain of salt when we heard the news that David Gilmour pulled a major Spın̈al Tap move by commissioning his betrothed to co-pen seven of the 11 songs for their 1994 LP The Division Bell. And it was her interjection of this kind of New Age sentimentalism that has helped rechristen the band “Polly Floyd” in the eyes of many of their most ardent listeners. She turned them into James, for crying out loud.

Lucky for us, there is only one vocal song on The Endless River, the first Floyd album in 20 years. But that singular tune, “Louder Than Words”, is reason enough to be eternally grateful to whomever made the decision to make the group’s 15^th and final studio LP a mostly instrumental affair. Especially after you catch wind of that wince-inducing opening line: “We bitch and we fight/Diss each other on sight.” Really, Polly? Really? Oh, btw, 1992 called about its street lingo, too.

However, “Louder Than Words” is the only hiccup on an otherwise masterful goodbye from this grand titan of AOR, who will be celebrating its 50^th anniversary in 2015. The Endless River stems from sessions for an ambient companion disc to The Division Bell the group was working on but discarded for unknown reasons. And what was apparently left behind was this brilliant, shimmering fusion of the instrumental work from that 1993-94 era (“Cluster One”, “Marooned”) and the ethos by which they had conspired A Saucerful of Secrets in the wake of Syd Barrett’s departure.

Yes, there are moments here where you can clearly ascertain Gilmour’s kowtowing to Samson’s Broadwayification of the Pink Floyd sound across numbers like “Anisina” and “Talkin’ Hawkin”, but the interplay between these three friends and such longtime associates as Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera and The Wall producer Bob Ezrin on bass rescues the songs from drowning in corn.

Yet for the most part, The Endless River is best viewed for what it was meant to be: a fitting tribute to the late Richard Wright, whose stellar keyboard work—the bedrock of the band, really—takes on the role as lead vocalist here. There will truly be no other like him. And the direction Gilmour and Mason took this—Pink Floyd’s true Final Cut—could not have been more perfect. –Ron Hart