Released less than a year after Pink Floyd\u2019s final album The Endless River<\/i>, guitarist David Gilmour returned in late September with a new solo album, his fourth overall. Unlike that Floyd disc, this one is made up of new songs and instrumental passages that are still of a piece with all of late-period Floyd work, and unlike Gilmour\u2019s last solo album On An Island<\/i>, the songs here are energetic and varied without sacrificing mood.<\/p>\n
The basic elements of any Floyd or Gilmour project since 1987 are here \u2013 female backup vocals, measured tempos that never really pick up the pace, moody atmospheric songs, the occasional nifty guitar solo and a theme. The concept here is the emotions and events that make up one full day, told in both words (written by Polly Samson, a novelist and Gilmour\u2019s wife) and the variety in the music. <\/p>\n
There\u2019s very little here that caves to a modern sound; had these songs been included on Momentary Lapse Of Reason <\/i>or The Division Bell<\/i>, they wouldn\u2019t have seemed out of place. But Gilmour is adept at finding variations on this expansive sound, such as the dense, deliberate acoustic ballad \u201cFaces Of Stone\u201d with an Eastern European carnival sound added, the lovely piano ballad \u201cA Boat Lies Waiting\u201d (a tribute to Floyd keyboard player Rick Wright) and the sprawling, melancholy \u201cDancing Right In Front Of Me.\u201d Breaking from tradition is \u201cThe Girl In The Yellow Dress,\u201d a straight-out nightclub jazz torch song evoking twilight and either regret or possibility.<\/p>\n
Gilmour brings plenty of grandeur as well, not only in those above songs but in the lush \u201cIn Any Tongue,\u201d the sprightly midtempo title track and \u201cToday,\u201d which starts as a near-hymn before breaking into the slightly funky, energetic main portion, featuring some great bass work and closing with a fine guitar solo (as if Gilmour plays any other kind). \u201cAnd Then\u2026\u201d closes the album with a long guitar-laden instrumental; it, along with \u201cBeauty,\u201d displays the sort of confidence and liquidity that Gilmour has brought to his solos.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re inclined to compare, there is plenty here that evokes Gilmour\u2019s work with Pink Floyd even reaching farther back than Momentary Lapse<\/i>, not just in sound but in scope and the mild thematic elements. Yet despite the grandiose, layered sound and the refusal to break from formula, Rattle That Lock <\/i>has an energy and elasticity not found in Gilmour\u2019s work in a long time. He\u2019s taking stock of his life, he\u2019s nodding to the past while looking to the future, he\u2019s working within his strengths while moderately expanding his palette, and the result is a solid effort that is better than anything he\u2019s released since at least 1994.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":32521,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8312],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-44283","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-david-gilmour","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=44283"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=44283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}