Pink Floyd – The Light Appears

Favourite Distant (Re)Discoveries of 2024

Posted on January 1, 2025 by Michael

5. Pink Floyd – Set Controls for the Heart of the Sun (Song): Early in 2024 I had a job that required me to regularly travel on wintry roads in rural Manitoba. One of the few highlights of those trips was listening to this Pink Floyd song from 1968’s A Saucerful of Secrets album. The spacey, atmospheric track is both eerie and calming at the same time. On my travels, blowing snow and passing cars would light up the starlit night while white knuckling it home.

4. Air – Moon Safari 25th Anniversary Edition (Album): Through it’s 25th anniversary release, it was a treat to get to go back and re-listen to Air’s 1998 debut album over and over and over again. While I travelled through Europe in 1999, the modern sounding retro album was still regularly being played in hostels and pubs across the continent. The singles “Kelly Watch The Stars” and “Sexy Boy” still make the skin tingle with their greatness. The 25th anniversary edition adds another disc of odds and sods to this essential 90s album.

3. David Bowie – Station to Station (Album): Working through the catalogue of David Bowie is a labour of love. His tenth studio album is one I had been looking forward to as it is critically acclaimed and favoured by a few knowledgeable friends. Incorporating some of the soul and funk sounds he had been exploring on past albums, this one adds a cocaine European sheen to it. The 10 minute title track takes up 25% of the album’s run time and keeps shifting it’s sound while “Golden Years” is one of his best songs. Another classic Bowie album just before the Berlin years start.

2. Bob Marley & The Wailers – Legend (Album): I’ve had this album for years and had never played it. The songs on this greatest hits set are ubiquitous – they will appear on the radio, TV, youtube, etc all throughout the year. To actually fully listen to these songs one after another is staggering. Each person will have their own favourites as each one is a classic. The work of a genius with his stellar band.

1. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band (Concert): Not the typical item we would write about in this yearly blog post but the Bruce Springsteen concert at the Canada Life Centre in Winnipeg on November 13 was extraordinary. One of my top bucket list performers to see, Bruce and the band did not disappoint. Barely stopping for breath between songs, they tore through 27 songs over approximately 3 hours. While I didn’t know many of the songs and there were a few tracks I would like to have heard, the performance was virtually flawless. Absolutely inspiring.

Album Reviews

Pink Floyd – A Saucerful Of Secrets (1968)

Posted on January 21, 2024 by Michael

On just their second album released in 1968, Pink Floyd already had to shake up the band. With Syd Barrett’s mental state further deteriorating, they brought in guitarist David Gilmour. Barrett’s last track with the band appears as the last song on the album, “Jugband Blues”. Pink Floyd retained some of the whimsy from their first album on tracks like “Remember a Day” written/sung by keyboardist Richard Wright with solid drumming from producer Norman Smith.

“Let There Be More Light” starts off the album with a heavy guitar riff and psychedelia floating around on a song about UFOs. Hushed vocals almost sound secretive. Similarly, “Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun” has Waters basing the lyrics on Chinese poetry, delivered in a serious deadpan manner. The mysteriously atmospheric track is the heart of the record and features all five members of Pink Floyd. At 11 minutes, the title track’s collage of sound misses the mark. With a handful of very good songs, the sophomore release of A Saucerful of Secrets is more than just a curiosity in the Pink Floyd collection.

7.5/10

Album Reviews

Pink Floyd – The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967)

Posted on March 8, 2022 by Michael

The history of Pink Floyd is a vast one that regularly gets repackaged and reissued along with astronomical prices. Considering their legacy, their mostly Syd Barrett written debut from 1967, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn is an interesting starting point. Known for their deeply psychedelic shows at the UFO club in London, Pink Floyd were a main attraction on the exploding UK music scene.

The first four tracks on the debut are astonishing. The spacey, experimental “Astronomy Domine” starts with what sounds like distorted astronaut reports with computer blips that add a tension. The song is earthbound with it’s guitar riffing and steady drumming of Nick Mason. “Lucifer Sam” has 60s spy noir thriller feel with lyrics about Barrett’s Siamese cat. Mostly sung by keyboardist Richard Wright, “Matilda Mother” has a more hazy, cloudy feel to it that is repeated on “Flaming”.

The album is broken up by the nearly 10 minute instrumental track, “Intersteller Overdrive”. Credited to the band, the unsettling track adds a swirling effect that switches the sound from side to side. The last four tracks are Barrett written 60s pop songs including “Chapter 24” that sounds similar to The Beatles’ experimental tracks – a childlike playfulness mixed with Chinese philosophy. One of Barrett’s most popular songs closes out the set with “Bike”. The stomping track with carnival organ speaks of Barrett trying to impress a girl that fits into his world. The track would later be chosen to close out the band’s best of album, Echoes.

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn is quite the ride for those whose Pink Floyd knowledge is mostly confined to the Roger Waters dominated Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall. It’s a whole other world of mostly Syd Barrett’s making, that is technicolour and full of (unsettling) wonder. Sadly this would be the only full album that Barrett would make with the group before the dark side effects of psychedelic drugs took over. He would soon be replaced by the sympathetic David Gilmour. Piper is widely regarded as a psych rock masterpiece and one certainly worth a deeper dive beyond the band’s mid-late 70s output.

9/10