lazarus
Blue Crack Supplier
Loved that Meddle review. It's a fucking fantastic album, and it was nice to see some love for Side 1, usually people only really talk about Echoes, but One of These Days, A Pillow of Winds and Fearless are all such stellar, top-tier Floyd tracks. One of These Days slaps, A Pillow of Winds is one of my all-time favourite calming mood songs (my ebay name is eiderdown71) and Fearless is brilliant. Those two songs in particular are a style that they almost completely abandoned from Dark Side onwards (I've never actually heard Obscured By Clouds though!)
San Tropez and Seamus are both inessential in my opinion though. Interesting enough curios but I've tried playing the album with Fearless leading straight into Echoes and it is exquisite, the YNWA chant leading into the ping. I challenge anyone to try that and feel like it's necessary to have San Tropez and Seamus sandwiched in between. Luckily, they only take up 10% of the album's runtime. (I like both songs; San Tropez has this great understated swagger to it and Seamus is a funny take on blues, but I consider them inessential to Meddle's listening experience.) Take them out and it's still 41 minutes long.
I was wondering if the issue is that you have these two gorgeous, mellow songs, followed by two that are humorous/slight, before going into another real heavy mother of a track? And that the middle seems like an unnecessary detour? What if, hear me out, the order was instead:
1. One of These Days
2. A Pillow Of Winds
3. San Tropez
4. Seamus
5. Fearless
6. Echoes
The other thing to keep in mind what that the album was meant to have a side flip in between Seamus and Echoes. So perhaps that longer pause makes the shock a little less.
Anyway, great fucking album. I love how the late section of Echoes brings back that driving bass (or guitar?) line from One of These Days for a bit, nice full circle there. And that other high guitar part is just this glorious breakthrough of transcendence after the menacing main riff.
Picking my favorite album of the year is going to be tough when Jessie, Fiona Apple, Charli XCX and Natalia Lafourcade all came through with brilliant works. Natalia's record is such a wonderful introduction to traditional Mexican music, instant comfort for the ears.
Waiting on Sufjan to either solve the dilemma or make it more challenging.
I mean, we can pretend like Fiona's isn't the best of the year because it seems too easy/obvious, or we can just acknowledge what's right in front of our faces. Still a breath of fresh air each time I hear it.
That Charli album ain't even close.