Pink Floyd at Progfreak.com

The album is marvelous? Yes. That is correct.

Highlight tracks are: Time, Great Gig in the Sky, Money, Us and Them, and Any Colour You Like

However, I only really listen to the 3 middle tracks and not the Shine On You Crazy Diamond segments (Even though I have given them a few spins and deem them to be decent). So my rating is generally speaking for Welcome To The Machine, Have A Cigar & Wish You Were Here, which are all fantastic.

This album is - of course - no highlight in Pink Floyd's discography (there are enough anyway ;) ), but a nice soundtrack album with some classics and some filler pieces. Sometimes gets extremly rough for PF standards (i. e. Nile Song) Highlights: Green Is The Colour (also live!), Cymbaline, Nile Song Lowlights: no really bad songs, but Party Sequence and More Blues are sort of boring.

Although "Dark Side of the Moon" might have become more iconic, "Wish You Were Here" to me is the peak of Pink Floyd's achievement. "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", in particular, sums up all the qualities that made me a hardcore Floyd fan for years. I first heard it on the Saturday night rock show on Radio 1, wondering what on earth was that bluesy guitar solo floating through the air, over a dreamy wash of synth. Then there were those four notes, resounding into silence, and the four notes again. It was David Gilmour of course, and the whole band's playing is spaced and timed to perfection. The song itself, when it eventually arrives, is a powerful and deserving tribute to their original lead singer Syd Barrett, filled with nostalgia for the times before his mind disintegrated. After the song, as if it couldn't get any more perfect, it finishes with not one, but two exquisite sax solos over a glittering layer of guitar arpeggios.

The central ... -> show full review

It seems like everything possible has been said about this album. Perfect, a work of a genius, immortal as the moon, dark as the night. What haven't been said about the brilliant production, the perfect tunes, the efficient effects & the strict finish. After hearing every compliment possible, PF really don't need me to be their criticizer, but still - here are my two pennies:

"Dark Side Of The Moon" is a soundtrack of a lifetime. As the time ticks out, the money that we chase, the insanity that we fear of, the forlorness of the human excistence inside this wide space. Waters' writing is surely sharper than ever and the production is planned till the last bit. Some components of this album are so imprinted in our memory, such as the clock ticking, the cashier effect (that became so popular, ironically, in economy shows...), Claire Torry's shouts, the crazy laughters of some studio engineers - all of them are soaked in the collective memory of PF & music ... -> show full review

A great concept album. I love this record, though: hard to rate.

IMO this is a masterpiece ... even though there are other Pink Floyd albums that are even better - like Wish You Were Here and Dark Side of the Moon. Those albums are more progressive in many ways and an amazing team effort, whereas this is essentially a Roger Waters solo album. It is also regressive, it might even be considered easy listening by the standards established by their previous albums. But then again progressiveness and musical complexity cannot be the only criteria.