The Division Bell (Pink Floyd, 1994)

Program note: I am acknowledging that I fell seriously behind on just about everything over the last few months, so until further notice, what follows is catch-up work. It would be irresponsible to create new content opportunity at this point. Of course I will continue reading, but the weekly album thing needs a mandatory rest. Besides, I'll run out of albums before too long.

In 2014, with the release of The Endless River, the world finally had to accept what they knew but didn't want to admit for the past 20 years: Pink Floyd was no more. Aside from a few freak reunions, they band was pretty much defunct since the end of the 1990's, but, even after the death of keyboardist Richard Wright, there were those who weren't prepared to close the books on Pink Floyd. Maybe they were trying to balance out those who gave up on the band in 1968 ("no Barrett, no band!"), or 1984 ("no Waters, no Floyd!"). Even though I don't consider either The Division Bell or A Momentary Lapse of Reason to be my primary go-to albums, I don't draw a hard line against either one. As long as Dave Gilmour stuck around (plus Nick Mason for continuity's sake), I didn't see any wrong with calling these Pink Floyd albums.

In some ways The Division Bell enjoys more legitimacy than its 1987 predecessor. The band photos, for one thing, were a marked improvement, with Wright fully reinstated (he was listed as an "additional musician" previously) and Gilmour sporting a smart haircut. The earlier photos seems so awkward with just Gilmour and Mason sporting age-inappropriate hairstyles. Also, The Division Bell marks a return to the concept album format. It's not a obvious structured format like The Wall, nor does it sport marathon-length songs like Animals. The listener needs to apply a little imagination, but a theme does emerge. The sudden rise of The Publius Enigma didn't hurt matters any. Click the link because I'm not going down that rabbit hole again! Although the album got pretty tepid reviews, it couldn't have arrived at a better time in my life and Pink Floyd was the first major rock show I went to. It was in a stadium and the band looked like a bunch of ants, but boy was it fun.

The last song, "High Hopes", from which the title of The Endless River comes, is probably the best final song a band can ask for. Many bands have no idea when their end is coming - even the Beatles got burned with the release of Let It Be making "The End" from Abbey Road in fact not the end. Other times the band just isn't ready to call it a day, so what may seem like finality is not. In true Pink Floyd form, the last notes are not the end of the song. Instead it's an awkwardly abrupt and almost inaudible phone conversation. It's an amusing coda, but I think at that point the band was already packing it in.