Jerk Music Critic: Pink Floyd, The Endless River

When Richard Wright died in 2008, the introspective and unique musical fabric of the group personified (see, for example, his work during the band's early days such as on Saucerful of Secrets and Atom Heart Mother), the eulogies of his bandmates and ex-bandmate poured forth as if the heart and soul of the band had passed on and that would be the end of Pink Floyd. Of course, unreleased performances and session recordings have ways of raising the departed, and on modern equipment even noodling and idle jams can gain full flesh after the fact. I'm not sure if another album was needed after 1994's The Division Bell, particularly given the David Gilmour-led incarnation's tendency to unfocused auditory textures and vapid lyrics, but I'm pretty sure it's not this one. It's competent, there's no doubt; we would have expected no less from the inveterate musical aesthete he is, notable in its technical excellence and scrupulous internal consistency. However, it's also in some ways an unimaginative summary document of every Floyd album that's gone before, popped into a computer given orders to incorporate this material from this session and that to make it appropriately "Floydian," which is why you hear bits of "Run Like Hell" in "Allons-y (1)" and snatches of "The Grand Vizier's Garden Party" in "Skins" (snicker) and "Terminal Frost" in "Anisina" (a particularly nice piece, I must admit, especially with those crazy wind instruments howling along on their separate melodic threads) and "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" throughout almost all of the lead tracks on the various "sides." In fact, the whole album is a great big "Wish You Were Here" for Wright just as the original was for Syd Barrett, but compared to its spiritual ancestor it suffers for being derivative and forced, and long on elegy and short on meat. Wright's solo credited works are slight, being limited to two short tracks remarkable only for their painful brevity and one being named "Autumn '68" (see Atom Heart Mother again), and if the songwriting credits are to be believed he barely features on half the tracks at all. Given his limited output, then, why constrain the entire album to merely post-production odds and ends? The especial low point is an obvious castoff from the "Bell" sessions recycling Stephen Hawking's electronic oration ("Talkin' Hawkin'", egad); he may literally have phoned that in. Gilmour closes the album on its sole vocal track (the decent "Louder Than Words"), a sort of gentle ballad that could have at least broken up the monotony of what preceded it if he'd only written one or two more. Currently, he's on record as saying this will be the final Pink Floyd album but as a long-time fan of the band I kind of doubt it and I certainly hope against it. This is not the note I'd go out on, nor do I believe Richard Wright would have wanted to either. The deluxe box adds a few more tracks on Blu-ray, including some additional Wright compositions, but is mostly intended as a video source; the high fidelity and additional material still don't counter the main album's fundamental imbalances. (Content: a single mild expletive.)

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Express Yourself

The Jerk Music Critic is a collection of amateur music reviews I wrote largely non-professionally between the 1990s and today. Some of these reviews are contemporary and some are retrospective, and a few are rather dated, but all are intended to be free-standing and permanent records of my completely worthless musical opinion. They are presented in no particular order and "new" reviews that occur may actually be simply prior ones I've only now transcribed. Older reviews have been edited to hopefully remove inaccuracies later revealed, as well as add brief content advisories (see "Smash the PMRC") and, where reissues exist with different tracks, brief commentaries on these later additions (the actual star review was not altered).

If you're looking for a specific artist, or just interested to see what I really liked (or really didn't), "When I Break Down" indexes reviews by artist and by number of stars awarded (see "Star Chart" for an explanation).

As we move deeper into the Internet music age where the album format might seem hopelessly antiquated, there is still some artistic value in the LP to those artists who still take advantage of it, and some of these recordings can only be properly appreciated in that context. I hope you enjoy these reviews and recommendations, and don't take them too seriously. — Cameron Kaiser

Star Chart

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An instant classic. Substantially advances/d the state of the art, either technologically, stylistically, or (preferentially) both, and is outstanding music besides. Buy it.

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A excellent album. Nearly every song is a gem; nearly every piece is a winner. Falls short of 5 stars for want of that certain special something, but the difference is in impact, not in musical quality. Buy it.

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Solid. Mostly good songs with a few clinkers. Salvageable with a good playlist. Buy it cheap.

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Mixed. Some good songs stand out, but not enough to make it listenable as a whole. Buy the good songs on iTunes.

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Bad. One or two tracks of even decent quality. Buy the good songs cheap on iTunes.

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How did this get released?

Smash the PMRC

I don't advocate for censorship or unnuanced black and white stickers, but I do advocate for parents being able to raise kids in the way they see fit, which might include introducing albums of controversial yet artistic merit at a point in their child's life when they can better appreciate it. The content summaries are intended to be a very general guide, reflective of only my own personal sensibilities and mine alone, and do not substitute in any way for a parent actually sitting down and listening to the album themselves. If you excessively rely on my content advisories, then I'm the one raising your kid, and you really don't want that.