By Taylor Long
Let’s play the hypothetical situation game. You’re an already legendary rock band. You’ve been around for over 20 years, and within just the past nine, you’ve gone to court over the potential demise of the group, released an album, toured and released a live album. It’s been a few years now and your creative impulses are surging. What do you do? If you’re Pink Floyd, you release one of your most under-rated albums.
With The Division Bell, Pink Floyd returned to the sound of their early career. “What Do You Want From Me?” would sound at home on almost any of their first few records. At the same time, Gilmour’s lyrics show some of the same emotional depth found in Waters’ on Wish You Were Here, with lines like “should I sing until I can’t sing any more / play these strings until my fingers are raw / you’re so hard to please / what do you want from me?”
Like Wish You Were Here, many consider this album to be about the personal history of the band, particularly on “Great Day For Freedom,” which goes into metaphor about walls being torn down. Though this is the group’s second post-Waters album, and it came out several years after the lawsuit, this is probably a safe bet.
“Take It Back” sounds like a Pink Floyd-ized contemporary adult hit. While you may think nails on a chalkboard may sound like a more appealing combination, don’t let this description fool you-it’s a really great song.
And this is just the point: a lot of elements found on The Division Bell were used in contemporary adult music at the time, such as a jazzier sound and female backing vocals. But this isn’t new territory to Pink Floyd, nor is it a sound they copied; it’s a sound they used elements of and incorporated into their own. This is still the Pink Floyd fans know and love. It still has the same eerie quality of every one of their albums, including the seemingly random sound clips.
Is it up to par with Dark Side Of The Moon, The Wall or Wish You Were Here? Not quite. But expecting a repeat of masterpiece is a lot to ask of anyone, even from a band like Pink Floyd. The Divison Bell is what they could give us at the time-a solid album that reverts back to a sound that seemed to have gotten lost among a lot of personal struggles. And how much more can you ask for than that?