Between 1976-1978, those bands of the 60's still surviving had to deal with the sudden rise of Punk. Each did so in a different way. Led Zeppelin tried to trade punches with the New Wave on Presence, an album whose very name seems to shout "Hey, we're still here!" The Rolling Stones flipped a contemptuous bird at the kids with Some Girls, a big sloppy drug-crazed funk-rock masterpiece. And Pink Floyd laughed at them from a great height, pinkies extended, with this record, which condemns even as it shrugs its shoulders.
I have long considered this to be among the more boring records Floyd ever put out. Listening to it with great determination over these past weeks has not changed that assessment. I hear a lo-fi acoustic nod to Punk here, but that's all I hear. Dogs, Pigs, Wings, whatever. It all flows together into one aural mush.
Others disagree. Over at Ground and Sky, a handful of Floydians praise it most praisingly. It's described as "a great disc, easily as good as Dark Side and Wish You Were Here," "their descent from the peak of the mountain," "the heaviest and harshest Floyd record." I suppose if Pink Floyd were my favorite band, I'd consider this album heavy and harsh, but they aren't so I don't. To be sure, there's an intensity to this music: that of a dog chasing its tail. If this album didn't have a famously bleak cover and obvious allusions to George Orwell's most famous book (besides 1984), no one would care about it. At best, it prefigures the thematic and musical ideas of The Wall; at worst, it fails badly enough to require the band to revisit those ideas.
Sometimes misery is exactly that.
Grade: C
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