Kevin's Watch

Based purely on album ratings, here's how the Pink Floyd albums stack up:

Null Ratings




StevieG Ratings

And here are the comparative ratings...

stevie - nice work on the ratings. Thank you.

Momentary seems to be the the biggest disagreement.

Yes, and I think it was probably only 3 songs on Momentary Lapse that we rated quite differently which changed the overall album rating so much.

It's interesting looking at the albums listed by rating compared to how I feel about certain albums. If I were to rank Floyd's albums before the review, it probably would have been different.

I was surprised that we gave the Final Cut the same score. A lot of Floyd fans dislike it. Qqq

Yes, there are many Final Cut dislikers.

I can possibly understand the reasoning, it being a Roger Waters album with minimal input from David in particular. And potentially David's negative comments about it contributed. Which in retrospect seem a little silly, given The Endless River.

But musically and lyrically I find it to be a great achievement.

I feel that Roger was proven right. David does need a strong personality pushing him to do better or we end up with Momentary.

And Roger needs a strong guitarist as we'll see when we do his solo albums.

Gotta admit Final Cut has never been among my favourites.

--A

Avatar wrote:Gotta admit Final Cut has never been among my favourites.

--A

Well that is why we review. Read both our reviews and try again.

Interesting.

I'd have the same top 5 as you both but in a different order, which is basically defined by my view of both breath-taking tracks on each album and (equally importantly) how flawed each album is when viewed as a whole. That's what takes The Wall down to #4 for me.

I'd go:-

#1. Dark Side
#2. Wish You Were Here
#3. Animals
#4. The Wall
#5 The Final Cut

and then I'd have

#6= The Division Bell
#6= Meddle

The rest are too arguable.

Although it shouldn't feature in the above list, a shout out for Pulse though as a fantastic live album.

We excluded live albums as they would skew the numbers. As in theory only the best would make the live album. This is the same reason that only any new material is voted on for anthologies.

Based on pure ratings, the albums are ranked as above, but yes, based on the albums I immediately want to listen to, I'd probably go more like:

1. Dark Side
2. Wish You Were Here
3. Animals
4. The Wall
5. Final Cut
6. Meddle

As I mentioned, I love Pulse and some of Delicate Sound of Thunder, so I'm glad Gilmour made AMLOR and The Division Bell, even though I don't really want to listen to those albums much.

Interestingly, your more instinctive and "gut feel" ranking matches mine nigh on exactly...

On that basis, although I'm genuinely admiring of (and grateful for) the jaw-dropping level of detail and knowledge shown by you and Sarge (and have myself delightedly had my Floyd horizons broadened as a direct result), I do wonder if trying to mathematically grade each album track separately is actually appropriate?

Don't get me wrong - I think the personal critiques and verbal descriptions of your personal reactions to each track were well worth the read. Having said that, attempting to force scored frameworks onto what are without doubt pieces of musical art?

I'm not so sure at all and think that an instinctive and emotion-driven response is probably the more valid way to go. How does each album make you feel as a whole? How cohesive is each? How many times and how strongly do you find yourself tempted to skip a weaker track in order to get to the next highlight?

All of which pretty much sums up my issues with The Wall. Yes, there are soaring highlights in there - and ones that easily hold their own with the very best that Floyd has ever done... but to my taste, there's also a bit too much of the overblown and self-indulgent in there too. Hence why as a whole, to me it's just not as seamlessly cohesive and flawlessly formed as my personal top three.

By dissecting and especially scoring to that level of detail, you may be risking missing the bigger picture... but don't for one second stop doing it. Perhaps an overall album rating as as whole that basically has nothing to do with each individual track score?

Anyhow, from my POV, my sincere thanks are due. Keep at it!

You're right TF in that an album will have an overall feeling of being better than another. Sarge mentions this back at the "Obscured by Clouds" album - it's one of his favourites, and yet isn't ranked as such (although it is ranked highly).

Having said that, I haven't had this much enjoyment on the Watch for a long time. It has been wonderful to critically review each song, let alone album, in the Floyd catalogue. And it has helped me personally to cement my views on each album, and also the pearls within even a mediocre album.

The Wall is an interesting one. I personally think it is a towering achievement, and each song flows into the next, almost as well as The Final Cut. There is that overarching feeling that it is bloated and self-indulgent, but when I'm listening to it, it doesn't feel that way. 'Tis a strange thing!

I respect the opinions of others when they say they don't connect or don't relate to it, but that simply isn't the case for me. I do, however, have a soft spot for the overblown (I am a massive fan of Muse, for example ) - perhaps it's the "epic" or "big" sound I'm attracted to (a note for TF, "to which I'm attracted" - is that better? . )

We'll keep going with the solo albums, and I'm sure that will lose some people, interest-wise, but I'm really looking forward to it because I'm keen to further understand each member's perspective as a solo artist, and how they influenced the Floyd. Through their solo albums I believe we will be able to gauge what was important to them.

I think you can feel differently about an album because the highs out perform the lows. I tried to honestly assess the songs. I dont enjoy the Wall as much as Obscurred , but objectively it is a better album. But I would prefer to drink on the front porch while listening to Obscurred.

And I think Animals is skewed by only having five songs. Meddle has great songs that are weighed down by some middling material.

I second the point about about Pulse, it's a magnificent live album. IMO it has the best version of Comfortably Numb and Sorrow, as well as the only live version of Hey You that I have heard. In fact, I prefer the live versions of What do you Want from me, Learning to fly, and Keep Talking over the studio versions.

I have DG's live albums, and prefer Live in Gdansk over Live in Pompeii. LIG has a gorgeous version of Echoes.

RW's Us and Them tour is available on iTunes and I bought and watched it recently. It's really good!

As i reviewed Floyd used the studio 🎙 trickery for Momentary that was popular at the time. The 70's produced warmer sounding albums.

dlbpharmd wrote:RW's Us and Them tour is available on iTunes and I bought and watched it recently. It's really good!

I just purchased that one and watched it in the last week. I absolutely love the "Great Gig in the Sky" version. Those ladies from Lucius absolutely nail an alternate version. There are some other major highlights. Overall, it's an amazing show.

StevieG wrote:

dlbpharmd wrote:RW's Us and Them tour is available on iTunes and I bought and watched it recently. It's really good!

I just purchased that one and watched it in the last week. I absolutely love the "Great Gig in the Sky" version. Those ladies from Lucius absolutely nail an alternate version. There are some other major highlights. Overall, it's an amazing show.

>ahem< waiting on your Giilmour reviews...

sgt.null wrote:

StevieG wrote:

dlbpharmd wrote:RW's Us and Them tour is available on iTunes and I bought and watched it recently. It's really good!

I just purchased that one and watched it in the last week. I absolutely love the "Great Gig in the Sky" version. Those ladies from Lucius absolutely nail an alternate version. There are some other major highlights. Overall, it's an amazing show.

>ahem< waiting on your Giilmour reviews...

I'm currently going through the first Gilmour album Shouldn't be too long (I also need to post a Gap dissection, and Cord Hurn is waiting so am failing at both right now )