The thing about being an old rock star is that, assuming you haven’t blown all the money, you can pretty much do as you please. Some go to parties, some stay home, some remain productive, and some only emerge from dormancy every decade or so, like cicadas. Of course, “productive” might look different at 78 than it did at 28, but that’s not the point.
The point is that while, in one sense, David Gilmour didn’t need to make a new album—his share of the Pink Floyd empire surely keeps the bills paid, and the man has nothing left to prove—he also did, simply because his urge to create has not dimmed. (In fact, he’s already spoken of being eager to make another album with the same players used here; don’t threaten us with a good time.)
“Doing as you please” in this case encompasses the decision to make the nine-track Luck And Strange a family affair in multiple respects. Other than one cover, all of the tracks are co-composed by Gilmour (music) and Polly Samson (lyrics), his wife. Gilmour and Samson’s daughter Romany and son Gabriel each contribute vocals. Gilmour’s friend and longtime Pink Floyd bandmate Richard Wright makes a posthumous appearance on the title track, and latter-day Pink Floyd bassist Guy Pratt plays on most of these tracks.
Luck And Strange opens with an appetizer, the 90-second instrumental “Black Cat,” a spare piano line providing the backdrop for a delicate, precise, instantly recognizable guitar solo. (I can think of maybe a dozen rock guitarists whose tone and phrasing are so distinctive that I could identify them within a handful of notes; Gilmour is one.)
From there we dive into the title track, a sprawling, superb creation crafted over the course of nearly two decades. An elastic, bluesy 2007 jam among Gilmour, Wright, Pratt and drummer Steve DiStanislao is given a fresh incarnation here, its slinky, groovy, oh-so-Floydian musical foundation now decorated with airy synths and harmonies as Gilmour sings Samson’s penetrating lyrics, a philosophical look back on a long and eventful life. “Quite a time to be born / Six-string masters of an expanding universe… But let’s hope it’s not just luck and strange / A one-off peaceful golden age.”
Seven minutes later, “The Piper’s Call” arrives, a thrummy, dreamy mid-tempo number with a psychedelic edge that feels like an intentional callback to early Floyd. It’s followed by “A Single Spark,” which represents perhaps the biggest musical departure here, a rather theatrical number augmented with an assertive orchestra. The arrangement takes full advantage of the grit and depth that age has added to Gilmour’s voice as it leads up to an extended, expressive solo. The topic once again is mortality: “Say it isn’t true that it’s all through in a single spark / Between two eternities.”
A brief instrumental snippet (“Vita Brevis”) offers a moody cleansing breath, and then we’re into the lone cover here, “Between Two Points,” another tune about mortality, this time featuring layered acoustic lines, a pulsing kick drum and Romany Gilmour firmly in the spotlight with her pretty, emotional lead vocal. In the fifth minute, Gilmour senior takes over for a restrained, evocative electric solo that carries the song across the finish line.
Kicking off the final trio, “Dark And Velvet Nights” delivers a chunky, echoey, rather haunted blues, with Gilmour sounding right at home. The airy, rather Beatlesque celebration of a longtime love “Sings” finds Gilmour entreating: “Darling, turn back the clock / Give me time, make it stop / Let’s hold back the news / Stay inside this cocoon.” An orchestra again gives the track an extra measure of lift. Closing things out, “Scattered” begins as a gentle, introspective number, then builds toward a rather chaotic orchestral interlude, before the song resumes again. Later on, there’s a sharp acoustic solo before Gilmour comes back in with that trademark electric sound, energetic bursts of notes arcing like raw electricity off a transformer.
The digital and CD package includes a pair of bonus tracks. “Yes I Have Ghosts” features a rather Renaissance-flavored acoustic arrangement with Romany Gilmour layering her vocals on top of her father’s in places. And the original 14-minute instrumental jam version of “Luck And Strange” makes for a wonderfully atmospheric coda.
The core band for Luck And Strange is Gilmour, Pratt (bass), Steve Gadd (drums) and Rob Gentry (keys), and they’re as sympatico a group as Gilmour has ever assembled for his solo work. The album’s crisp sound and depth of field are thanks to co-producers Gilmour and Charlie Andrew.
David Gilmour joined Pink Floyd in 1967 at the age of 21. Fifty-seven years later, his iconic voice and guitar tone remain instantly recognizable, and Luck And Strange’s power, vitality, and craft suggest there’s more still to come from David Gilmour. We can only hope.
