1.-Cluster One
2.-What Do You Want From Me
3.-Poles Apart
4.-Marooned
5.-A Great Day For Freedom
6.-Wearing The Inside Out
7.-Take It Back
8.-Coming Back To Life
9.-Keep Talking
10.-Lost For Words
11.-High Hopes

  

   After parting ways with Roger Waters in the mid-eighties and going on their own, Pink Floyd (only with Dave Gilmour, Rick Wright and Nick Mason and a myriad of musicians that have nothing to do with the original band) wrote and released "A Momentary Lapse Of Reason", doing a world tour that became "The Delicate Sound Of Thunder". Around eight years later, Pink Floyd releases The Division Bell. I remember having heard The Wall before buying this album, and I liked it a lot. I was an immature teenager then. Now, as a cynical bastard and after hearing almost anything that Pink Floyd has released, I can tell you that I haven't seen a sadder ruin of a band than Pink Floyd's. In "A Momentary..." they showed clearly that Pink Floyd was dead. In "The Division Bell" they just rub that miserable fact in the fan's faces. The tendency to use a pop structure in their songs is now clearer than ever and Gilmour has taken most of the songwriting in his hands. We acknowledged the fact long time ago that he was an excellent musician, but he isn't doing a good job being Pink Floyd's frontman. Let's start with the opener, "Cluster One", an impeccable instrumental intro. We can't really complain about the craftmanship of Gilmour's guitar or the melancholic piano by Wright, can we? But then, all hell turns loose. "What Do You want From Me" sounds like an intent of a badass song from the eighties. The result is a complete fiasco. "Poles Apart" is a very poor track, without any character. "Marooned" delivers again the pleasure of Gilmour's hands and the quality of Wright in another beautiful instrumental track. Again, the expectations are ruined with "A Great Day For Freedom". I really hate to use the word "corny" for Pink Floyd, but I can't help it. It is a very corny track. "Wearing The Inside Out" raises a little bit the level (might be that Wright helped in writing the song?) featuring a little bit of the floydian spirit. Again, the album falls apart. "Take It Back" is another poor intent of pop soft rock. It ended sounding like a U2 song (and I mean it: really nauseating) If we thought that "A Great Day..." was as corny as Pink Floyd was going to get, we have to hear "Coming Back To Life". "Keep Talking" is yet another poor intent, this time of a "dark" track, but failing miserably. "Lost For Words" is a nice try, not being totally a floydian song, but at least with more quality than the rest. As a closer comes "High Hopes". Ironically, this song could have been the best song they had ever produced. Featuring beautiful solos and a good theme for the lirycs, it is indeed a good track, its quality reduced by Gilmour's ambition. If the music was a failure, the lirycs are beyond description. The earlier sad themes are almost totally gone, replaced by corny subjects. When the themes are good (as in "High Hopes") they are spoiled by Polly Samson. Who the hell is she? may the Pink Floyd fan ask. I don't really know, but, to tell the truth, i don't want to know. She appears in the liner notes as co-author of most of the lirycs, along Gilmour. What the heck is wrong with the guy? Allowing strangers to guest in a Pink Floyd album?

  

   The good old floydian ages are long gone. Both Gilmour and Waters should be ashamed for soiling a band's name as great as Pink Floyd's. Both of them are prostituting the band's memory. Once again I'll say it: Pink Floyd died after "Animals" in 1977. There is a band that stole the name and there is an old man touring the world saying that he is the genius behind The Wall. None of them is the band that I love called Pink Floyd.

 

53 OUT OF 100