Pink Floyd: Endless River reviews

'People tend to use the phrase “a footnote to their career” in order to damn a record with faint praise,' wrote the Guardian's rock critic Alexis Petridis in his review of Pink Floyd's final album, 'but there’s a sense that a footnote to Pink Floyd’s career may be precisely what The Endless River is supposed to be: not a new album from an extant band, but an echo from the past – or a last, warm but slightly awkward group hug'.

The Independent was less charitable. 'What's blindingly clear,' wrote Andy Gill, 'is that, without the sparking creativity of a Syd or Roger, all that's left is ghastly faux-psychedelic dinner-party muzak.

Whatever the reviews (and they've been mixed), The Endless River is now officially the most pre-ordered album ever on Amazon. For fans, and for those who don't know what all the fuss is about, Culture Whisper takes a tour through the life and times of the Floyd. 

Pink Floyd are as definitively 70s as Farrah Fawcett’s hairstyle or orange wallpaper. Alongside bands like Yes and King Crimson, they helped to define (for better or worse) a genre known as prog-rock. Founded in 1965 by London students Syd Barrett, Nick Mason, Roger Waters and Richard Wright (with David Gilmour joining the band as a fifth member in December 1967), in their pomp the band dominated the music scene of the period with albums like The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), Wish You Were Here (1975), Animals (1977), The Wall (1979) and The Final Cut (1983).
It’s easy to forget, then, that the Floyd continued to make music throughout the later 80s and into the mid-90s, before going on hiatus after their fourteenth studio album The Division Bell. Now, after twenty years, they’re back. Their new (and reportedly final) album The Endless River, is due for release for on November 7.
As Pink Floyd make their final statement, we take a look back over an extraordinary career that saw the band transformed from cult concern to international stadium fillers.

The early years

Pink Floyd’s first album, Piper at the Gates of Dawn, was released in 1967, a landmark year in the history of psychadelia which also saw The Beatles’ Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts’ Club Band and Love’s Forever Changes. Yet, Pink Floyd’s debut remains a singular achievement, not least because it is the only one of their albums on which Syd Barrett was the primary songwriter. The songs are at once wide-eyed and anxious, and Barrett’s surreal lyrics belie a powerful longing for lost innocence.
Piper at the Gates of Dawn was followed in 1968 by A Saucerful of Secrets, which took the band’s experimentation in a rather different direction. Only one of Barrett’s songs, the mesmeric and deeply sad ‘Jugband Blues’, is included. Rather, the album centres on its title track, a rather indulgent eleven-minute instrumental: a cacophony of discordant keys, squalling feedback and clattering percussion, rounded off by a searing organ coda. Over the next five years, the band continued to focus on longer compositions. It’s fair to say that not all of their efforts have stood the test of time, but highlights like the lilting ‘Grantchester Meadows’ retain more than kitsch appeal.

Breakthrough

Despite their taste for spacey meanderings, Pink Floyd enjoyed increasing commercial success in the early 1970s. For all its pomp and excess, Atom Heart Mother even reached number one in the UK. It was with Dark Side of the Moon, however, that the band became the superstars they are today, curtailing some, although by no means all, of their more decadent tendencies. The album is a cornerstone of the classic rock canon; ‘Money’ and ‘Time’ are surely some of the most played (or perhaps overplayed?) tracks of all time.
They followed Dark Side of the Moon with a slew of acclaimed releases: Wish You Were Here in 1975, Animals in 1977, and The Wall in 1979. From the anthemic slow-burner ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’ to the rock-operatics of ‘Another Brick In The Wall’, the band were at the height of their hit-making powers. Over the course of the ‘80s and ‘90s, the band were to release a further three albums, striving to reach the same peaks that they had in the ‘70s.

Today

Today, the band are remembered as much for their image as for their music. In large part, this is thanks to Storm Thorgerson, who designed almost all of the band’s record sleeves, including the ubiqituous Dark Side of the Moon prism. Although the impact of this particular image has been lessened by over-exposure, other of Thorgerson’s work retains its potency: the brazen childishness of Atom Heart Mother and the arresting gloom of Animals are particular highlights.
Sadly, Thorgerson died last year, but the grand tradition of the Pink Floyd album cover continues. For their fifteenth studio release, the band have enlisted the help of Ahmed Emad Eldin, an eighteen-year-old from Egypt to supply the artwork. The design is suitably audacious: a solitary figure, shirt unbuttoned, rowing through an ocean of clouds. If this is anything to go by, we can expect that with Eternal River, Pink Floyd will continue to tread the same uneasy line between the sublime and the ridiculous that they have been since the ‘60s.

Sadly, there'll be no Pink Floyd London tour dates

Meanwhile, Dave Gilmour has warned classic rock fans that they shouldn't expect a Pink Floyd tour behind The Endless River. 'Gilmour pointed out that the band’s last outing, behind 1994′s ‘The Division Bell,’ was less than satisfying for him – “The whole thing was becoming bigger than I liked; I wasn’t enjoying the lack of connection with the audience” – and this album’s heavy focus on the keyboard work of deceased Floyd member Rick Wright means that live dates are, in Gilmour’s words, “kind of impossible.” Going forward, he added, “I’m really enjoying my life and my music. There’s no room for Pink Floyd. The thought of doing any more causes me to break out in a cold sweat.”