CLASSIC ALBUM: Pink Floyd – Meddle

Post-Syd Barrett, pre-Dark Side of the Moon Pink Floyd albums can be quite an odd listen in the sense that it’s hard to determine what exactly the kind of music Pink Floyd were making is. 1971’s Meddle is the 6th album of their career and it is still essentially Floyd finding their feet. While often categorised as Progressive Rock it’s difficult to see where they slot in aside their progressive contemporaries, they were not (Gilmour aside) as technically proficient as King Crimson, Gentle Giant, or as eccentric as Genesis, Jethro Tull, Van Der Graaf Generator. But for what they lack in technical chops and eccentricity The Floyd make up for in imagination, improvisation and emotionality in spades. Meddle is a great record, incredibly varied in musical style, some of the best post-Syd psych-space-rock they would make is evident in the whirring, whizzing opener One of These Days which develops into a great, elongated space-boogie (a-la Money) like only Pink Floyd do. The evocative, lilting psych-folk of A Pillow of Winds has much in common with some of their Canterbury scene contemporaries and perfectly segues into Fearless, the stand out track from side 1, which is a beautiful, pastoral, Beatlesesque, offering of space-folk that culminates with a bizarre yet intriguing pasted in coda of the Kop Choir singing You’ll Never Walk Alone.

Side 2 is taken up by the gargantuan experiment Echoes which I guess somewhat defines Pink Floyd as ‘progressive’ to a certain degree. Over the course of its 23 minutes Echoes floats and drifts through different song structures, sonic ideas and experimentation, dominated by Gilmour’s electric guitar playing, textures and solos. Echoes is a track in which over its first 10 minutes Gilmour essentially and impressively lays down the template (both sonically and melodically) for what would become The Dark Side of the Moon. Without the explorations of Echoes there is no Dark Side.., Echoes’ mid-section is taken up by a swathe of ambient sound, not too dissimilar to Tangerine Dream, the lysergic ambience of pieces by Can or avenues later explored by Brian Eno, before it heads back in for one last hurrah. While pointing towards to expansive and accomplished rock of The Dark Side Of The Moon (1973) and Wish You Were Here (1975), Echoes as a stand-alone track is a complete piece of music that Floyd would not really capture again in their career with quite same magnificence.