The Floyd-Hole: Every Pink Floyd Album - Part 3

 MORE - REVIEW

Cirrus Minor kicks off the album with pleasing nature sounds and birdsong before a gentle acoustic guitar shows up. The lyrics are sung in a very melancholy way and the organ playing sounds like a funeral service, giving the song a depressing effect overall (quite the contrast to the pleasant background birdsong throughout). This song feels like it was meant to encourage sullen introspection.

The Nile Song up next is abruptly upbeat and loud comparatively, with hard rocking guitars and screaming vocals. The lyrics are overly simplistic, but the whole song has this "primitive rock" vibe that revels in simple lyrics. Very different to any PF song that precedes it so far, feeling more like something you might actually hear on a rock radio station.

Up next, Crying Song again, jarringly, shifts the whole tone of the album - this time, things are soft and dulcet, and framed in that echo-y hippie tone that PF seems to love at this point. They lyrics sing of sadness and hardship, but the overall tone of the song is somewhat optimistic. A layman like me might conclude PF is trying to show off the many facets of sadness in these first three songs

Up the Khyber is fast-paced and upbeat, with jarring piano/organ chord strokes not unlike those of experimental jazz. This one feels like a weird 2-minute interlude more than a proper song.

Green is the Colour kicks off with gentle acoustic guitar and pan flutes, again turning the whole tone of the album on a dime. It sounds very folksy, almost whimsical. The singing is forlorn, almost sullen, which again flies against the jaunty nature of the music behind it.

The next song, Cymbaline, has soft piano and soothing bongos, but the lyrics are obviously depressing. A much slower, more reflective song to be sure - I think PF is starting to embrace the idea that music can inspire a psychological journey. 

Party Sequence sounds more like an ambient interlude than anything - peppy jungle drums over a jaunty flute riff that fades into the next song. The juxtaposition of the two instrument styles work, surprisingly.

Main Theme conversely, has an ominous (gong?) roll-in and haunting organ music, which feels creepy and suspenseful until the drums and guitar show up to shift the tone of the song into something more jazzy. There's a Middle-Eastern tonality running throughout the track (sitars and whatnot), and it combines with the rest of the music in a good way to build what I can only describe as "ancient aliens making jazz".

Ibiza Bar immediately kicks into hard-rock mode with heavy guitars and a conventional backing beat. It's not above the usual PF organ sounds and twee vocals, but here it does a better job of blending them organically into such a heavy song. Another one that wouldn't sound out of place on the radio.

More Blues definitely has the distinctive guitar riffs made famous in blues music, and though you'd think the blues aren't exactly PF's style, they make it work here... but that's probably because it's also a very generic blues song with no lyrics. Just morose guitar and gentle beat.

Quicksilver begins with bizarre quasi-industrial sounds, in stark contrast to the nature of the previous song. Gentle chimes and dull roars give this song a very sci-fi feel, like something from the soundtrack to  Logan's Run or Lost in Space. This time, the random organ music works in the song's favor, being a staple of the sci-fi genre. No lyrics though - very clearly an ambience song.

In the next song, A Spanish Piece, a classical acoustic guitar plays over someone mumbling in sinister-sounding Spanish gibberish while making weird mouth noises. It is a strange, brief song clearly meant as another interlude.

Dramatic Theme finalizes the album with chunky bass lines and a groovy, metropolitan tone. Again, wildly different to the styles of its predecessors. Electric guitar plucking echoes into the distance, making this song sound more like something from the '80s rather than the '60s.

Overall: This album is all over the place, but unlike the earlier albums where it seemed like the chaos was PF trying to find a sound that sticks, this effort feels more like PF probing the depths at which their music can affect someone. I suppose since this album was the soundtrack to an experimental European film, they might have been directed to craft emotion-churning music from the start - the end result inspires a lot of introspection, and to me, marks the genesis of PF's reputation as "stoner music". The album has a hefty amount of interludes and songs sans lyrics, which is telling of its origin as a film soundtrack - I think More suffers by being chained to the whims of a film rather than the musicians, however I do believe PF came away from this album with a better understanding of how to use their music in order to drive the emotions of the listener.