PINK FLOYD

A Momentary Lapse Of Reason PLG

ALL THESE YEARS ON, IT’S STRONGER THAN ONE MIGHT RECALL.

First Gilmour-led Floyd album remains reasonably good.

It’s hard to hear Floyd’s 13th studio album in quite the same way since co-producer Bob Ezrin revealed, in 2013, that he’d advocated filling it with hip hop and rap. According to Ezrin, Dave Gilmour’s disbelieving response was, “Oh my God, that would be terrible.” While we’ll never know what Gilmour’s stately guitar-based rock would sound like blended with a dash of Nuthin’ But A ‘G’ Thang thrown in, it was the right move at the time to stick to a template more in the vein of Comfortably Numb. As the ‘comeback’ album without Roger Waters, A Momentary Lapse Of Reason was under enough microscopes as it was.

With legal tussles ongoing, Nick Mason was more interested in sound effects than drumming and Rick Wright, rehired on a weekly wage, ultimately not playing very much, this was a whisker away from being a Gilmour solo album. There’s an argument to be had that he just used the brand name to piss Waters off, though it’s more likely because the record label knew it made commercial sense.

Largely recorded on his houseboat studio Astoria, it features Gilmour co-writes with Jon Carin, Phil Manzanera and Pat Leonard, best known for some of Madonna’s greatest hits. The same year, Leonard was co-writing and producing Bryan Ferry’s Bete Noire album. The Ferry and Manzanera links prompts the question of whether this sounds at all like late-period Roxy. Only in its lushness, is the answer.

It’s never been a favourite among Floyd fans, and does lumber and plod in parts. This release is the “update and remix” constructed by Gilmour and Andy Jackson for the The Later Years box set in 2019. Mason added drum parts and Wright’s contributions were given more sway (the 80s reverb is reduced too, thankfully). So it’s more Pink Floyd than it was. Upon initial release, debate raged over whether it was Floyd at all, with Waters sidelined. But whichever side of that row people came down on, few found it inspired. “Facile… a forgery,” said Waters, as he would.

All these years on, it’s stronger than one might recall. Sure, it lacks the perfect marriage of Waters’ lyrics and Gilmour’s musicality, but if you look past the new leader’s ropey way with protest (The Dogs Of War) and the sense that everything’s moving more slowly and heavily than it should, it has passages of poise and flow. Yet Another Movie is a sumptuous procession, and the instrumental Terminal Frost shimmers with warmth. Sorrow is sluggish, but as so often Gilmour makes it soar with absurdly great soloing. With

A Momentary Lapse Of Reason, post-Waters Floyd were tentatively learning to fly, sometimes gliding.