Pink Floyd is an icon of British rock music and its members – forerunners of psychedelic music – awarded the public with breathtaking recordings, more-than-intricate videos, but also personal life and group dynamic controversies. Fans have regrouped for years from Syd Barretians to Roger Water activists or David Gilmour supporters, but they should all come together to celebrate Pink Floyd’s latest and last album, The Endless River, released on 10 November 2014.
In an interview given to a BBC Radio 4 programme in the day of the release, David Gilmour revealed his memories of past recordings of The Division Bell, which profoundly interline with their Endless River, fact which is proven by the very name of their fresh album. High Hopes, probably the most appreciated Division Bell composition, ends:
‘’The grass was greener
The light was brighter
The taste was sweeter
The nights of wonder
With friends surrounded
The dawn mist glowing
The water flowing
The endless river‘’
Debating over a band like Pink Floyd triggers most of the times (un)fortunate past connections, and High Hopes is one of the best examples of such linking, considering the fact that The Division Bell was released 20 years ago and reissued this very year.
The matter of past and present Pink Floyd existence is a polemic one, and David Gilmour refers to the change in their music as being a magical process: ‘’Improvisational ethos at the beginning (…) changed into a more specific music about issues of one sort or another and those specific songs became a little more important within all that mix’’. The songwriter and multi-instrumentalist also recalled their journey through the late sixties and early seventies. When asked about the significance of their latest album as a piece in the Pink Floyd universe, Gilmour stated that: ‘’It just feels that something lives on going with us (…) obviously, it is coming to the end of the road, that river’’.
The Endless River may be their last studio album, but this will most definitely not condemn the band to oblivion. It is as drummer Nick Mason confesses: ‘’What is extraordinary and gratifying is to be 70 years old at an age where rock ‘n’ roll was meant to give you a career lasting about a year, and a record was something that lasted for six or eight weeks, and we’re still in there punching.”
The Endless River Tracklist:
01. Things Left Unsaid
02. It’s What We Do
03. Ebb And Flow
04. Sum
05. Skins
06. Unsung
07. Anisina
08. The Lost Art of Conversation
09. On Noodle Street
10. Night Light
11. Allons-y (1)
12. Autumn’68
13. Allons-y (2)
14. Talkin’ Hawkin’
15. Calling
16. Eyes To Pearls
17. Surfacing
18. Louder Than Words