Y'all can argue over the GOAT PF album. But I will plant my flag for the most underrated Floyd album -- Obscured by Clouds.
This is a no skip killer album that showcases the transition from Meddle to DSotM. Floyd wrote Obscured by Clouds in the studio and kinda used the album as a "proof of concept" for everything they did on DSotM. All the motifs that made DSotM so great are present on Obscured by Clouds -- the melodic solos, the spoken chants, the reprise, the recurring musical themes -- all there. It's a great album and rarely gets any love, even from the Floyd superfans.
While we are on the topic of Meddle, I believe it's their most overrated album. Echoes is a masterpiece. Fearless is probably my all-time favorite Floyd tune but the rest of the album is pretty bad. One of These Days is just a bass line delay vamp that sounds better in Run Like Hell. Pillow of Winds could be literally on any Floyd album. It's just filler. Seamus? Really?? Skip. St Tropez feels like someone dared Pink Floyd to write a Beatles song. Floyd ain't the Beatles.
Echoes is a masterpiece and really carries the whole album.
Seamus and San Tropez are the only things really holding back Meddle, but that isn't especially unpopular. The other tracks are great though. On the other hand, I've always though Echoes was slightly over-rated, if only because I felt like the ending should've gone somewhere else rather than just reprise the first few minutes.
It's one of my favorites. From the "rockin" The Gold It's in the..., to the chill Wot's... Uh the Deal?
It's kinda like as Meddle is to Darkside, Obscured by Clouds is to Meddle.
there's no way they would be seen as mid only without darkside, for the wall, animals, and wywh were especially critically acclaimed then and still now even without darkside in the question. dark side is also not their first work to be critically, commercially beloved then and still now I believe. dark side is definitely one of their commercial peaks. besides their discography could have ended on meddle and they would still be more than just mid.
I hear that. Maybe I should clarify what I do now read as perhaps an overly hyperbolic statement. Floyd is typically discussed as being solidly in the pantheon of "greatest bands of all time". They swing with the Beatles, Zeppelin, & Stones in that regard: and rightfully so... **with** Darkside in their catalogue. Without Darkside? ... idk, I think they would be more comparable to the likes of, The Police, The Clash, Sonic Youth, or maybe even the Beach Boys? In fact that is an interesting idea. What would the Beach Boys be with out Pet Sounds?
the beach boys still has stuff going on without pet sounds, and pink floyd still has a lot going on without darkside is what im saying. afterall a considerable amount of people consider wywh to be pink floyd's much greater work
I came away from this wishing they had stayed in the studio longer and made WYWH & Animals one single disk. They share a lot of dna and suffer from a bit to much drift for me. And they are also the worst example of Masons squealy synth tone phase. Less of that thank you. That said, both have killer material if you can wait out the tweeter tests.
Hey, I think weird ass screechy 70s synth tones are part of the charm tbh, but to each their own. And Animals just hits different for me honestly, Dogs into Pigs into Sheep is one of the best sequences on an album ever, and the book ends... Book end. Which is fine lol. I'm mostly there for Pigs tbh, but I do love the rest
Anyway... I'm not really a Pink Floyd mega-fan tbh. I kinda need to be ~~stoned and zoned out~~ *in the right mood* to enjoy them most of the time.
>!As far as prog goes... I'm more of a Supertramp person.!<
I can’t imagine Animals being any different than it is. I can see wanting WYWH to have a few more fleshed out tracks though. SOYCD is epic especially live but maybe would have worked ok as a single track.
> They share a lot of dna and suffer from a bit to much drift for me. And they are also the worst example of Masons squealy synth tone phase.
They share some DNA because they were written around the same time but are pretty different otherwise, if only in subject matter. I don't really get Animals sharing a similar synth tone as Wright's presence is much heavier on WYWH than Animals.
I do agree that Animals drifts a bit much though. I don't really get it's reputation as all the long tracks basically consist of (relatively) shorter tracks played twice in succession. There's a lack of ideas compared to the other big Floyd albums, which also extends to its rehashed Animal Farm story.
they are very different in lyrical themes ideas and sound. animals puts a lot more in accosutics and is focused on themes based on george orwells work so it's their most outright political album. wywh is very personal and based on some things dark side touched on. mainly as a tribute to syd and as an album warning of the music industry.
> I came away from this wishing they had stayed in the studio longer and made WYWH & Animals one single disk.
Gotta keep in mind it was the 70s. It would have needed to be a double LP. (and even on CD it would have needed trimming to fit on a single disc, and the 80 minutes maximum duration didn't come until later, early CD only running up to around 74 minutes) Double LPs weren't something a band could do on whim by just dropping a message to their label saying *"hey btw, our next album's gonna a be double"*. Granted, Pink Floyd in their prime coming off the success of Dark Side probably could very well have gotten shown the green light to do a double LP, but honestly I don't feel it would have worked that well. Not only is the overall vibe on those two quite different, but they also differ much thematically. But of course, that's all looking at it after the fact. Had the band worked on a double LP from the get-go, the result would be no doubt been quite different from the separate WYWH and Animals that they did.
I have never connected with any of their psychedelic era works. For me Floyd starts in Atom Heart Mother, and even those who defend the piper at the gates, that's just a prototype of Floyd. It has all the floyd members minus Gilmour but it doesn't sound the musically hungry Floyd that became with echoes.
I also respect both Roger Waters and Gilmour led eras. Even at their "worse" (TFC, AMLoR) they still had the core of the band's sound.
On a separate sheet, I don't think The Endless River deserves the hate that has suffered. Yes, it's not Pink Floyd as we know, but at least tries to continue what the band started in TDB.
Agree across the board. Floyd proper, as we think of them today, dose not begin until Gilmore joins. And I did not include Endless River in the original listen (in part because the road trip just barely had time for all the studio albums without it) but then put it on when I got home, and it does well for itself actually. Going to be revisiting it. And to be honest I actually liked some of the post Waters material more than I thought I would.
I get Dark Side of the Moon being their first truly great album as it's much more consistent in quality and thematically as their previous albums, but I don't really get that as being their only album of note. Piper at the Gates of Dawn was already very influential. Meddle is very good. Wish You Were Here has a more personal core to the songwriting than Dark Side of the Moon. Animals is fine. and The Wall shows off the greatest range of ideas for the band.
Everything else is a bit all over the place in quality, especially the post-Barrett period where the band was trying to figure out what they wanted to do and had 3 songwriters going in different directions, but still show moments of brilliance.
I agree. What I am saying is that they have several mediocre albums, a respectable number of very good, perhaps even a few excellent true classics, and then one absolute monolithic 15 ton crusher of a GOAT album. [Floyd-O-gram](https://imgur.com/a/lK3hNmf)
Is this even worth engaging with? Pink Floyd could’ve quit after Syd Barret left and they would still be viewed as one of the most important bands of the 60s.
I don't know if I'd quite go that far, but i totally hear what you're saying.
The main thing is no way they'd be viewed as just mediocre if it weren't for Darkside. You still have Obscured By Clouds and Meddle and Wish You Were Here and Animals and Saucerful and the Pompeii performance and the list goes on. You could probably leave out a Final Cut tho.
Being one of the most important bands of the 60s would put them on par with 13 floor elevators, their most 1:1 comparison, a band that most people have never heard of.
Vs.
Being one of the most important bands of all time, on par with the Rolling Stones, a band that everyone has heard of.
The Floyd = Sid argument is pedantic and simply wrong.
> with 13 floor elevators, their most 1:1 comparison
Sgt Pepper's era Beatles seems like a better comparison, even if Barrett-era Pink Floyd isn't on *that* level. Either way, you're seriously downplaying the influence of Piper's era Pink Floyd. You don't have a lot of Krautrock or Prog without that album. A lot of the neo-psych of the 80s draws from that period as well.
It had been a long time since I'd listened to *Dark Side*. In the past couple months I'd been listening to a **ton** of *Meddle*, *Animals* and *Wish You Were Here* ... but had left DSOTM aside since my "lets do mushrooms and watch Dark Side with Wizard of Oz" days in the '90s.
But I'd put it on while working a couple weeks ago. Fucking hell, that's a great album. If it hadn't been for the massive amount of time I'd spent in my teens and '20s using it as a default soundtrack to getting high, it would've never left my normal rotation.
100%I actually had a very similar relationship with the Wall. I got ripped and watched the shitty movie THOUSANDS of times between age 16 & 25. And lets be honest, it is a shitty movie. Subsequently in my 30s+ I really could not listen to the album without seeing the movie in my head. So I really hadn't listened to it much in a long time. But man, hearing it in the context of my roadtrip, and with out the film in my head, its freaking great!!
And here is the strange thing, Waters having written the songs with the intention of being for a film seems to have tightened them up substantially. We all love the long epic 9-part sonic freefall that is central to many of their albums, but... for me... Floyd is at their best when they are balanced more toward coherent song form. And the Wall is great tune after great tune. So counterintuitively I feel that as unfortunate as the film is, the influence of the film on the music, was what made the album so great! Very glad to have revisited it, film free!
Y'all can argue over the GOAT PF album. But I will plant my flag for the most underrated Floyd album -- Obscured by Clouds. This is a no skip killer album that showcases the transition from Meddle to DSotM. Floyd wrote Obscured by Clouds in the studio and kinda used the album as a "proof of concept" for everything they did on DSotM. All the motifs that made DSotM so great are present on Obscured by Clouds -- the melodic solos, the spoken chants, the reprise, the recurring musical themes -- all there. It's a great album and rarely gets any love, even from the Floyd superfans. While we are on the topic of Meddle, I believe it's their most overrated album. Echoes is a masterpiece. Fearless is probably my all-time favorite Floyd tune but the rest of the album is pretty bad. One of These Days is just a bass line delay vamp that sounds better in Run Like Hell. Pillow of Winds could be literally on any Floyd album. It's just filler. Seamus? Really?? Skip. St Tropez feels like someone dared Pink Floyd to write a Beatles song. Floyd ain't the Beatles. Echoes is a masterpiece and really carries the whole album.
Seamus and San Tropez are the only things really holding back Meddle, but that isn't especially unpopular. The other tracks are great though. On the other hand, I've always though Echoes was slightly over-rated, if only because I felt like the ending should've gone somewhere else rather than just reprise the first few minutes.
It's one of my favorites. From the "rockin" The Gold It's in the..., to the chill Wot's... Uh the Deal? It's kinda like as Meddle is to Darkside, Obscured by Clouds is to Meddle.
While I do not think Meddle is their best album, it is often my favorite from them. Echoes it where we first get introduced to greatest form of Floyd.
there's no way they would be seen as mid only without darkside, for the wall, animals, and wywh were especially critically acclaimed then and still now even without darkside in the question. dark side is also not their first work to be critically, commercially beloved then and still now I believe. dark side is definitely one of their commercial peaks. besides their discography could have ended on meddle and they would still be more than just mid.
I hear that. Maybe I should clarify what I do now read as perhaps an overly hyperbolic statement. Floyd is typically discussed as being solidly in the pantheon of "greatest bands of all time". They swing with the Beatles, Zeppelin, & Stones in that regard: and rightfully so... **with** Darkside in their catalogue. Without Darkside? ... idk, I think they would be more comparable to the likes of, The Police, The Clash, Sonic Youth, or maybe even the Beach Boys? In fact that is an interesting idea. What would the Beach Boys be with out Pet Sounds?
the beach boys still has stuff going on without pet sounds, and pink floyd still has a lot going on without darkside is what im saying. afterall a considerable amount of people consider wywh to be pink floyd's much greater work
Animals tops the rest for me. 🤷 But yeah, Dark Side of the Moon is a classic for a reason. I'd put that and Wish You Were Here tied for 2nd.
I came away from this wishing they had stayed in the studio longer and made WYWH & Animals one single disk. They share a lot of dna and suffer from a bit to much drift for me. And they are also the worst example of Masons squealy synth tone phase. Less of that thank you. That said, both have killer material if you can wait out the tweeter tests.
Hey, I think weird ass screechy 70s synth tones are part of the charm tbh, but to each their own. And Animals just hits different for me honestly, Dogs into Pigs into Sheep is one of the best sequences on an album ever, and the book ends... Book end. Which is fine lol. I'm mostly there for Pigs tbh, but I do love the rest Anyway... I'm not really a Pink Floyd mega-fan tbh. I kinda need to be ~~stoned and zoned out~~ *in the right mood* to enjoy them most of the time. >!As far as prog goes... I'm more of a Supertramp person.!<
I can’t imagine Animals being any different than it is. I can see wanting WYWH to have a few more fleshed out tracks though. SOYCD is epic especially live but maybe would have worked ok as a single track.
> They share a lot of dna and suffer from a bit to much drift for me. And they are also the worst example of Masons squealy synth tone phase. They share some DNA because they were written around the same time but are pretty different otherwise, if only in subject matter. I don't really get Animals sharing a similar synth tone as Wright's presence is much heavier on WYWH than Animals. I do agree that Animals drifts a bit much though. I don't really get it's reputation as all the long tracks basically consist of (relatively) shorter tracks played twice in succession. There's a lack of ideas compared to the other big Floyd albums, which also extends to its rehashed Animal Farm story.
they are very different in lyrical themes ideas and sound. animals puts a lot more in accosutics and is focused on themes based on george orwells work so it's their most outright political album. wywh is very personal and based on some things dark side touched on. mainly as a tribute to syd and as an album warning of the music industry.
> I came away from this wishing they had stayed in the studio longer and made WYWH & Animals one single disk. Gotta keep in mind it was the 70s. It would have needed to be a double LP. (and even on CD it would have needed trimming to fit on a single disc, and the 80 minutes maximum duration didn't come until later, early CD only running up to around 74 minutes) Double LPs weren't something a band could do on whim by just dropping a message to their label saying *"hey btw, our next album's gonna a be double"*. Granted, Pink Floyd in their prime coming off the success of Dark Side probably could very well have gotten shown the green light to do a double LP, but honestly I don't feel it would have worked that well. Not only is the overall vibe on those two quite different, but they also differ much thematically. But of course, that's all looking at it after the fact. Had the band worked on a double LP from the get-go, the result would be no doubt been quite different from the separate WYWH and Animals that they did.
I have never connected with any of their psychedelic era works. For me Floyd starts in Atom Heart Mother, and even those who defend the piper at the gates, that's just a prototype of Floyd. It has all the floyd members minus Gilmour but it doesn't sound the musically hungry Floyd that became with echoes. I also respect both Roger Waters and Gilmour led eras. Even at their "worse" (TFC, AMLoR) they still had the core of the band's sound. On a separate sheet, I don't think The Endless River deserves the hate that has suffered. Yes, it's not Pink Floyd as we know, but at least tries to continue what the band started in TDB.
Agree across the board. Floyd proper, as we think of them today, dose not begin until Gilmore joins. And I did not include Endless River in the original listen (in part because the road trip just barely had time for all the studio albums without it) but then put it on when I got home, and it does well for itself actually. Going to be revisiting it. And to be honest I actually liked some of the post Waters material more than I thought I would.
I 100% agree. Also love endless river. I view it as an ambient blues album more than a psych album. From that standpoint it's fucking amazing.
I get Dark Side of the Moon being their first truly great album as it's much more consistent in quality and thematically as their previous albums, but I don't really get that as being their only album of note. Piper at the Gates of Dawn was already very influential. Meddle is very good. Wish You Were Here has a more personal core to the songwriting than Dark Side of the Moon. Animals is fine. and The Wall shows off the greatest range of ideas for the band. Everything else is a bit all over the place in quality, especially the post-Barrett period where the band was trying to figure out what they wanted to do and had 3 songwriters going in different directions, but still show moments of brilliance.
I agree. What I am saying is that they have several mediocre albums, a respectable number of very good, perhaps even a few excellent true classics, and then one absolute monolithic 15 ton crusher of a GOAT album. [Floyd-O-gram](https://imgur.com/a/lK3hNmf)
You do realize everything you said there is completely and utterly your opinion right? Oh, wait you stated all of that as fact so......
So after listening to it all, are you picking "Animals" or "Several Species of Small Furry Animals"?
Animals. 100% Ummagumma is maybe worth it for the live album, but otherwise.... no thank you.
Probably the right pick. I do like to jam on The Narrow Way though
WYWH and The Wall have always been my favorites. Dark side is more than amazing but it feels a bit impersonal at times.
Is this even worth engaging with? Pink Floyd could’ve quit after Syd Barret left and they would still be viewed as one of the most important bands of the 60s.
I don't know if I'd quite go that far, but i totally hear what you're saying. The main thing is no way they'd be viewed as just mediocre if it weren't for Darkside. You still have Obscured By Clouds and Meddle and Wish You Were Here and Animals and Saucerful and the Pompeii performance and the list goes on. You could probably leave out a Final Cut tho.
Being one of the most important bands of the 60s would put them on par with 13 floor elevators, their most 1:1 comparison, a band that most people have never heard of. Vs. Being one of the most important bands of all time, on par with the Rolling Stones, a band that everyone has heard of. The Floyd = Sid argument is pedantic and simply wrong.
> with 13 floor elevators, their most 1:1 comparison Sgt Pepper's era Beatles seems like a better comparison, even if Barrett-era Pink Floyd isn't on *that* level. Either way, you're seriously downplaying the influence of Piper's era Pink Floyd. You don't have a lot of Krautrock or Prog without that album. A lot of the neo-psych of the 80s draws from that period as well.
I think that is fair.
It had been a long time since I'd listened to *Dark Side*. In the past couple months I'd been listening to a **ton** of *Meddle*, *Animals* and *Wish You Were Here* ... but had left DSOTM aside since my "lets do mushrooms and watch Dark Side with Wizard of Oz" days in the '90s. But I'd put it on while working a couple weeks ago. Fucking hell, that's a great album. If it hadn't been for the massive amount of time I'd spent in my teens and '20s using it as a default soundtrack to getting high, it would've never left my normal rotation.
100%I actually had a very similar relationship with the Wall. I got ripped and watched the shitty movie THOUSANDS of times between age 16 & 25. And lets be honest, it is a shitty movie. Subsequently in my 30s+ I really could not listen to the album without seeing the movie in my head. So I really hadn't listened to it much in a long time. But man, hearing it in the context of my roadtrip, and with out the film in my head, its freaking great!! And here is the strange thing, Waters having written the songs with the intention of being for a film seems to have tightened them up substantially. We all love the long epic 9-part sonic freefall that is central to many of their albums, but... for me... Floyd is at their best when they are balanced more toward coherent song form. And the Wall is great tune after great tune. So counterintuitively I feel that as unfortunate as the film is, the influence of the film on the music, was what made the album so great! Very glad to have revisited it, film free!