Pink Floyd - Meddle

Released - October 1971

Genre - Progressive Rock

Producer - Pink Floyd

Selected Personnel - David Gilmour (Guitar/Vocals/Bass/Harmonica); Roger Waters (Bass/Vocals/Guitar); Richard Wright (Organ/Piano/Vocals); Nick Mason (Drums/Percussion)

Standout Track - Echoes

While it's far from their most consistently brilliant album, 1971's Meddle represents perhaps the first time Pink Floyd succeeded in recording something genuinely phenomenal. The titular suite from the previous year's Atom Heart Mother had been grandiose, ambitious and exciting but in some ways it represented a sort of logical progression of the neoclassicism first tentatively stumbled upon by Brian Wilson and the Beatles back in the mid-60s. With "Echoes," however, Floyd really pushed things into overdrive and created something that sounded unlike anything that had come before, delivering in the process what is undoubtedly the finest side-long prog epic of all time (and there are a lot of them). Meddle was an album it took me a long time to love - on initial hearings, I was immediately blown away by its two bookend tracks, but found everything in between them fairly dull and forgettable. Eventually, most of those filler tracks wormed their way into my affections, and even if they hadn't, what the band achieved on those first and last tracks is incredible enough to merit this album a well-deserved place in history. It's certainly the pinnacle of everything Pink Floyd achieved prior to The Dark Side Of The Moon, and still stands up as one of their crowning efforts.

The circumstances surrounding the album's creation all sow seeds for serious doubt - coming off the back of their extensive touring in support of Atom Heart Mother, Pink Floyd had finally achieved a certain degree of financial stability and critical notice, and perhaps felt a certain pressure to justify it with their next record. However, they found themselves in the studio with no idea as to any theme or central idea to work on, and so instead decided to focus the sessions on a series of sonic experiments to see where they would lead them. It's the kind of idea that could so easily have led them into creating something entirely self-indulgent and devoid of musical merit, and indeed these experiments stalled for a long time and struggled to deliver anything of worth. But finally, from these awkward and half-hearted experimental sessions came a single noise - a sonar-like "ping" created by Richard Wright's distortion of a keyboard note - that would become the starting point for one of their greatest works. After that initial breakthrough, the experiments continued to deliver successful and exciting new sounds, many of them deriving from accidental discoveries (particular guitar effects were discovered as a result of guitars being incorrectly plugged into equipment, and so on).

First, though, it's worth dealing with the filler. In between the opening and closing tracks, which both benefit immensely from these sonic experiments, come four more traditional songs, and it's certainly fair to say they make up the album's low point. It's not that Floyd in general can't handle more traditional composition - they'd managed it perfectly well on earlier albums, with the likes of the gloriously hazy "Grantchester Meadows" from Ummagumma. But here, perhaps the exciting developments of the new sounds the band were playing with meant their hearts just weren't in the more conventional material and they turned in a selection of songs below their usual standard. "Seamus" is particularly weak, and regularly gets voted the worst Floyd song of all time, being a non-committal, almost tongue-in-cheek blues number delivered vocally almost as an afterthought by Roger Waters and accompanied by a barking dog. "Fearless" is another disappointing song, a fairly plodding acoustic number that's never managed to do much to excite me. "A Pillow Of Winds" takes some time to really appreciate but eventually reveals itself as a genuinely enjoyable, mellow acoustic love song (this time with the softer tones of David Gilmour delivering the lead vocals), while "San Tropez" is a fun, almost novelty, jazz-inflected piece of sunny pop music. Ultimately, though, while a couple of these songs are fairly enjoyable in their own right, they really are just place-holders to make up a full album alongside the truly great songs.

First there's "One Of These Days," the (almost) instrumentals that kicks things off. From the rushing of wind that first greets the ears at the album's opening and into the insistent, chugging distorted bass riff (played by both Waters and Gilmour on two guitars), it develops into one of the finest slices of hard rock Floyd would ever deliver. It's a fairly simple song, churning over that same addictive bass riff and decorating it with the razor-sharp waves of Wright's keyboard and the snaking, tortured guitar lines of Gilmour weaving in amongst it all, but via the sonic distortions being manipulated by the band during the sessions, turns into something truly weird and menacing (Nick Mason's distorted growl midway through of "One of these days I'm gonna cut you into little pieces" is one of the weirdest moments the band ever captured on record). It's also perhaps one of the finest showcases for the band as a complete unit, with every single member contributing something essential to the sound as a whole, down to Nick Mason's urgent drumming that propels it forward. By the end of "Echoes," however, the brilliance of "One Of These Days" is a distant memory. "Echoes" is something else. If ever there was a song that manages to sum up by itself everything that make Floyd great, this is it. From out of the mist and the weirdness of Wright's opening sonar ping and cloudy keyboard soundscapes comes the gentle lilt of Gilmour's vocals and the song's opening section, which slowly builds in intensity before segueing brilliantly to a mid-tempo funk groove over which Gilmour delivers one of his finest bluesy solos. The mid-section of the song is something that will try the patience of some but showcases the fruits of the band's experimentation, being an almost proto-ambient soundscape of wind-like humming and tortured screaming all conjured from the canvas of the recording studio. Even I'll admit that it goes on too long, though the weirdness that Floyd were able to conjure from the starting point of just trying to develop a coherent musical idea is impressive. From there Wright's organ takes the lead and ushers the song into its closing section, slowly building to a triumphant crescendo as Gilmour's insistent, muted guitar riff slowly builds in intensity to one of the most explosive moments in Floyd's discography before descending back into the opening theme.

"Echoes" is, put simply, one of prog's crowning achievements and Exhibit A for those who complain that prog is music that sacrifices heart or power for intelligence. There are moments in "Echoes" that rank among some of the finest, most jaw-droppingly stunning moments in the history of rock music, even when you factor in the few minutes of directionless sound collage the listener has to sit through in the middle. Ultimately, my reservations about the other tracks on the album really are groundless - if Floyd had released just "One Of These Days" and "Echoes" as a short album, it would be a shoe-in for one of the best albums of all time, so the additional material shouldn't really be seen as a downside. It is a shame that, away from the experimental compositional techniques that had helped them to really find their muse on those two songs, they struggled to really recapture the same sense of exellence, but it's a complaint one can't really make without feeling ever so slightly ungrateful. With Meddle, Floyd cemented their place as a musical force to be reckoned with - if somebody had suggested after Atom Heart Mother that they would go on to become one of the most successful and iconic bands of all time, perhaps it would have been easy to be cynical. After Meddle, it was a destiny that only a true cynic could begrudge them.

Track Listing:

1. One Of These Days (Roger Waters; David Gilmour; Richard Wright & Nick Mason)

2. A Pillow Of Winds (Roger Waters & David Gilmour)

3. Fearless (Roger Waters & David Gilmour)

4. San Tropez (Roger Waters)

5. Seamus (Roger Waters; David Gilmour; Richard Wright & Nick Mason)

6. Echoes (Roger Waters; David Gilmour; Richard Wright & Nick Mason)