nsign's Full Review: On an Island by David Gilmour
The phrase "set and setting" was once a cornerstone of responsible LSD-fuelled head tripping, applied to the importance of where and with whom you decided to muse on the eternal verities of existence. Or, more likely, stare intently at a carpet for three hours. The idea behind this particular tenet was if you do your trip in a comfortable and accommodating environment, the more pleasant and rewarding the experience would be, whereas in the wrong setting there is a slight risk of either a) not having much fun or b) melting into a puddle of ego-less psychosis, which would rather spoil the occasion. It's a kind of fuzzy "you get out what you put in" logic, and you could put the case that a similar rule can often be applied to music (with admittedly less serious consequences). Nobody really wants to sit down after a hard day at the office with a glass of wine and have some Norwegian death metal sodomize their eardrums, or be massaged by the gentle strains of Bach while getting ready for a night on the town.
There are some records that simply do not work when taken out of their intended zones. As great as the Beatles, Bob Dylan or Neil Young might be, put them on in a nightclub and you can expect to lose droves of the crowd. By the same token, the long-awaited new solo album from Pink Floyd front man David Gilmour requires a setting of harmonious calm to fully appreciate its qualities. Play it in your car in the midst of rush hour traffic and it is likely to pass you by unnoticed, but through headphones or relaxing in comfort with the lights down, a revelation awaits. It's a languorous, unhurried, warmly glowing and lushly orchestrated piece of work, built on vast ocean-like chords and with the occasional surprise thrown in to shake things up.
The final Pink Floyd album, 1994's excellent The Division Bell, has much in common with this new release, at least musically. Indeed, many of the ten tracks here could easily have fitted seamlessly into that album's tracklisting, which is perhaps unsurprising given that many of the same personnel are present here, including Floyd keyboard player Rick Wright, and regular session bassist Guy Pratt. Although far less of a concept album than 1979's The Wall, The Division Bell was still structured around pointedly obvious themes, such as isolation, the damage caused by lack of communication, and personal conflicts.
It doesn't take too much imagination to see this as a type of exorcism for Gilmour following the years of bitter public acrimony with ex-bandmate Roger Waters, and following a massive world tour in 1995, Gilmour has spent the last 12 years comfortably ensconced in his Cambridge farmhouse, raising numerous children and engaging in the occasional charitable act (selling one of his houses for 3 million, and donating the whole whack to an inner city housing project).
The starting point for On An Island was Gilmour's remarkable 2003 In Concert DVD, which found him lured out of semi-retirement to perform a stripped-down mixture of Floyd classics and choice covers for the first time since 1995, backed by baroque cello and angelic female backing vocals, which won him rave reviews and increased the clamour for new product. Then, last July, he put some more ghosts to bed with the shock Floyd reunion with Roger Waters at Live 8 in London's Hyde Park, an event of such "Holy f*ck!" magnitude I sat in silent open-mouthed shock for a month afterwards. Kind of.
Along the way, Gilmour stored approximately 150 snippets of music on a minidisk player, which, with the help of Roxy Music guitarist and album producer Phil Manzanera he whittled down to the 10 tracks on this rather marvellous new album, his first solo work in 22 years. The years have clearly done Gilmour the world of good, as gone are the meditations on the human propensity for conflict and spite, which characterised the last two Pink Floyd albums, to be replaced with songs bathed in domestic bliss and settled contentment.
By his own admission, Gilmour has never been a particularly strong lyricist, as his rather shaky efforts on A Momentary Lapse Of Reason will attest, but the assistance of his novelist wife Polly Samson on The Division Bell reaped dividends, and she again co-writes most of these tracks. She is even pictured in the album's artwork strolling hand in hand with Gilmour through leafy woodland scenes, as if we needed further confirmation as to where Gilmour’s head is currently at.
All rather cosy and comfortable, and you might think it could potentially not be the best ingredients for a new album, but you'd be wrong. On An Island is really rather affecting, and often moving, and with each listen reveals extra sumptuous layers. Sound wise, it's a flawless expansion of The Division Bell's mellifluous template, but also at various points resembles Pink Floyd circa 1972, and on one track, summons the welcome ghost of Syd Barrett's telecaster.
The instrumental Castellorizon, named after a Aegean island, opens the album with a scene-setting orchestral chord, plucked harps and mandolin twangs, until finally that velvet guitar scythes out of the speakers for the first of many solos. Think Cluster One and Signs Of Life from previous albums and you're not far off. Polish composer Zbigniew Preisner provides the panoramic orchestration, more filmic than ever before. The title track rolls in on a gentle acoustic wave, the melody and general atmosphere highly reminiscent of Echoes, and it features a gorgeous chorus rendered sublime by the backing vocals of David Crosby and Graham Nash:
"Let the night surround you,
We're halfway to the stars,
Ebb and flow, Let it go,
Feel her warmth beside you".
The Blue continues in a similar vein with a dreamy, cavernous hymn to the sea and what Gilmour sees as our inevitable merging with it one day, with floating vocals from Rick Wright and some endearingly hippy-ish lyrics about "ceaselessly, star-crossed you and me, we’ll be forever blue”. Just when things are beginning to seem a little too laid back comes the opening metallic shards of Take A Breath, which clearly indicates Gilmour has had a listen to Piper At The Gates Of Dawn lately. It’s initially a close aural match for Astronomy Domine, with scratchy guitars throwing out some ringing seventh chords, and has a low multi-tracked chorus of “take a deep breath now” sung by what sounds like the Borg from Star Trek. It is still not a particularly fast track, but it has a certain propulsiveness and a distinctly harder edge than anything else on the album. About three and a half minutes in, the drums drop out for a brief interlude of backwards guitars before the engine catches back on for the closing rippling solo. If On An Island were to yield a hit single, this would be it.
Red Sky at Night is another moody three-minute instrumental which lets Gilmour demonstrate the fruits of the saxophone lessons he’s been having for the last few years, while in the background we hear the carefree sounds of children in a playground. The jazzy concoction of This Heaven throws us a curveball with what initially could pass for a mid-seventies Tom Waits track, with its loping double bass, twanging blues riff and lashings of hammond organ courtesy of Georgie Fame, and finds Gilmour again extolling the comforting virtues of family life:
"So break the bread and pour the wine,
I need no blessings, but I’m counting mine,
Life is much more than money buys.."
The instrumental Then I Close My Eyes opens with the sound of what is known as a “chumbush” being absently strummed (its a kind of Turkish banjo, apparently), before merging into a hypnotic acoustic soundscape of slide guitars and drifting cornets, not dissimilar in style to Fleetwood Mac’s Albatross. The plaintive waltz Smile, debuted on the In Concert DVD, possesses quite the most beautiful melody on offer here and a cascadingly lovely middle eight, the aural equivalent of a warm hug and a kiss on the forehead, and has the feel of a home demo, with Gilmour’s voice nakedly devoid of studio trickery.
There is a point in A Pocketful of Stones where you fear things are about to come off the rails, but it just about works thanks to the purest vocal performance on the album, a tinkling piano and an orchestra which suggests more than it actually does. It’s not the most immediate melody, but reaps some rewards with multiple listens, while the closing autumnul ballad Where We Start takes us out on a note of pastoral reflection with recollections of walking "Along by the river we feed bread to the swans, we walk ourselves weary you and I".
Some of these tracks take time to solidify in your mind, and there are certainly no pyrotechnics here, but this is a record of sweeping romanticism and brain-tickling instrumentation, and with the guitar work as bendy and tumescent as you’d expect, there is plenty here to satisfy long-term Floyd fans and newcomers alike. There is still the odd melancholic flourish of course, this being from one of the co-authors of Dark Side Of The Moon, but the overriding atmosphere is a smiling and unclouded one. If there is a criticism, it's that occasionally the album could do with a slight increase in tempo and sweat to vary the mood a little, particularly on the last four tracks, and there is perhaps one instrumental too many.
But let's not pick holes in what is essentially one of the most welcome returns to the music scene in recent memory. With the ghosts of the turbulent past behind him, an upcoming tour (my tickets for Glasgow, 27th May are currently my most prized posession) and a reputed stack of new material waiting to be discovered, it's easy to believe him when he sings on the final track, "All of the dark times left behind, so much behind us, still far to go". Here's hoping.
Track Listing:
1. Castellorizon
2. On An Island
3. The Blue
4. Take A Breath
5. Red Sky At Night
6. This Heaven
7. Then I Close My Eyes
8. Smile
9. A Pocketful of Stones
10. Where We Start
On An Island is the third David Gilmour album and his first studio recording since Pink Floyd s 1994 multi-platinum The Division Bell. From the first ...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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