Listen to Comfortably Numb. Listen to it on a good personal stereo with clear headphones. You will turn numb by the time the song ends.
The Album
Pink Floyd’s Pulse may have been unintended as HellFury put it in his review (btw, that was a good job). But it sure put the band into a league on their own when it comes to live performances. Nowhere does this album fail to impress despite being a live one complete with 30, 000-40, 000 strong crowds cheering in the background. The recording is perfect. The acoustics and the mixing work stand out. This is the best album to begin with if you are a Pink Floyd novice. Roger Waters parted ways with the band rather bitterly, Sid Barrett, the genius was confined to lunacy! But David Gilmour, Mason and Wright carried on the legacy of these masters with elan. They made two albums before they decided to go live on a ’Pulse’ tour. (Roger Waters had his own In The Flesh live tour and not surprisingly, most of the songs are common in both the albums). Pulse is a collection of some of the best songs the band has produced, with and without Waters and Barrett. The band’s best album (rightly put by Hellfury), Dark Side Of The Moon lends its entire content. Speak To Me, Breathe, Time, Money, Us And Them, Brain Damage etc
The Songs
This album is about sounds, melancholy and the dark side of the moon. What does the phrase cosmic mean to you? This is a cosmic album. (Breathe, Shine On You Crazy Diamond) This is cosmic rock, replete with a Star Trek journey into the un-chartered, in search of something. (Astronomy Domine, Eclipse, Learning To Fly) The album covers are rich in deep electrifying psychedelic blue...so is the music, Blue, soul-searching yet electric (Hey You, High Hopes, Another Brick In The Wall). A lot of industrial sounds are incorporated, the ones you never thought of as music, but then you never knew how musical it is. Try Us and Them, the chorus of highly charged singers in an emotional voice complete with rich electronic melody...the word is melody and you can add harmony to it. Otherwise this is NOT your average programmed disco. This is rock. Cosmic Rock.
Messages
Haunting! Try Hey You...you can feel Roger Waters’ pain in it as he reaches out to his dad who died in WW2. Another Brick in The Wall, that universal anthem brings out he childhood angst in Waters as he strives to break away from the shackles of a demanding society in his childhood. High Hopes is another sojourn into the angst ridden being. Time is a call to the young ones o get up and act. It starts with the ticking of a hundred alarm clocks just as Money starts with the ringing of cash registers. Ever thought of them as music?
David Gilmour’s guitars are fantastic. Totally unconventional, he weaves a misty haze with the electric sounds he produces. The opera-like backing vocals of the ‘Pink Floyd Ladies’ are there all right. Try The Great Gig In The Sky and check out the a prima donna’s ecstasy in an orgiastic break of singing. Cosmic.
At the end of the second album, get numb. Comfortably Numb is a dope song! Listen to it, and you may never need drugs to go high!
The Suggestion
Buy this album, better a CD. I have never found a person disappointed or dis-enchanted with it. This is a journey worth taking at the cost it comes for. See you on the dark side of the moon.