PINK FLOYD

Delicate Sound Of Thunder (2019 Remix)

GThe Floyd’s 1988 live album loosens up with added tracks.

ilmour and Mason had won the rights to the name, but could they, with Wright reinstalled, win the audience? The 1988 version of Floyd – despite being the era of their very worst choices regarding hair, shirts and dad jeans – did just that, in big numbers. Their hugely successful tour, promoting the patchy A Momentary Lapse Of Reason (“Facile,” snarked Waters), then yielded this live album, their first full one, recorded over five nights at Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, New York. Famously, it was also the first album played in space, by Soviet cosmonauts.

Now lifted from The Later Years box set, it adds to the original running order, which basically went: the new stuff, which the band like; then the old stuff, which the crowd like and have patiently awaited. Signs Of Life and One Slip are dreary, but Welcome To The Machine has atmospheric grit to it, and it’s hard to comprehend why The Great Gig In The Sky was omitted from the original. Also, why on earth would you make the version of Money shorter?

At the risk of starting fights, Gilmour’s solo on Comfortably Numb here is the best he ever did. On The Run also kicks with a shot of energy, which was a quality this incarnation of Floyd lacked, overall. It’s not that Floyd shouldn’t be earnest and wilfully portentous, but their late 80s mood came across as rather weary and disengaged, and therefore wearying and hard to engage with. The listener can almost hear their own attention, preoccupied with legal and financial feuds with Waters, wandering now and again.

That said, as this coasts through Shine On You Crazy Diamond, or Time, or Us And Them, there is actual, bona fide, alchemical greatness in the room, and all the bad haircuts and dad jeans on the planet can’t dilute that. It probably sounded pretty amazing to those cosmonauts too. Polished for this release – the accompanying Grammy nominated concert film was also recently screened at cinemas – it’s more thunder than blunder.