Pink Floyd - The Division Bell (1994)

Dan:

I remember resisting the purchase of The Division Bell, Pink Floyd's 14th album. It came out at a bad time for me, as I was in the midst of a professional move from Miami to Atlanta. I questioned how much more could Pink Floyd have left in them. Wasn't A Momentary Lapse of Reason enough of an encore to a great franchise? Of course, anything Pink Floyd released sold like crazy; I just wasn't sure I wanted to be a part of it. But eventually I succumbed to temptation and now, with 30 years of hindsight, appreciate it much more than I did before. 

The Division Bell followed the same formula as A Momentary Lapse of Reason. The core trio of Richard Wright, Dave Gilmour, and Nick Mason was augmented by a large cast of contributing musicians and technicians. Roger Waters was again missing in action, replaced by Guy Pratt on bass.

Division Bell has a nominal theme of mutual understanding, signified by titles like "Poles Apart" and "Keep Talking." But the theme was not a straitjacket in the way the themes of The Final Cut and The Wall were. Indeed, my favorite track on The Division Bell is Gilmour's confrontation with his audience, asking "What Do You Want from Me?" It's a song whose lyrics perfectly fit the sound of the band, as Gilmour advises the audience to sort out their personal issues elsewhere: "I'm not the one you need." 

"High Hopes" is a song yearning nostalgically for days gone by when "the grass was greener, the light was brighter, with friends surrounded, the nights of wonder." This longing for a simpler past contrasts with the song's portrait of current challenges:

Encumbered forever by desire and ambition

There's a hunger still unsatisfied

Our weary eyes still stray to the horizon

Though down this road we've been so many times

Most of the songs on Division Bell address issues relevant to career success, relationships, and resilience in ways that earlier Floyd albums did not. The departure of songwriter Roger Waters is, of course, a main reason for the shift in content. Part of the reason is also the songwriting of Gilmour's wife, Polly Samson, who co-wrote several songs on the album with him. Gilmour's later solo albums - On an Island and Rattle that Lock - would include more of Samson's songs. Her contributions to the Gilmour legacy are similar to Susan Hoover's creative storytelling in Camel, the band led by her husband Andrew Latimer.

Gilmour and Samson's best co-written song on Division Bell is "A Great Day for Freedom." It reflects on the positive outlook following the fall of the Berlin wall and the liberation of countries formerly ruled behind Russia's iron curtain.

On the day the wall came down

The ship of fools had finally run aground

Promises lit up the night

Like paper doves in flight

But the optimism changes to resignation that oppression continues and personal relationships remain vulnerable despite the promises that lit up the night:

Now life devalues day by day

As friends and neighbours turn away

And there's a change that even with regret

Cannot be undone

Now frontiers shift like desert sands

While nations wash their bloodied hands

Of loyalty, of history

In shades of grey

As I reflect on such lyrics, I must express gratitude to Gilmour and Samson for the song and the whole album, which contains gems like this throughout. So much for discounting Pink Floyd!

Steve:

Much like Dan, I was slow to get into The Division Bell at first, for many of the same reasons. In retrospect, however, this is a much more fully realized album than its predecessor, A Momentary Lapse of Reason. Whereas the latter was essentially a Dave Gilmour solo album blown up to Pink Floyd proportions, The Division Bell provides as good an example as I can imagine of what Pink Floyd should sound like in the 1990s.  

Recalling both Wish You Were Here and the preceding Momentary Lapse, the album opens with a mood-setting instrumental, "Cluster One", an excellent piece in the "Shine on You Crazy Diamond" mode. Immediately following this with "What Do You Want from Me" seems slightly ironic in this context, as Gilmour tries to shake his audience out of their unreasonable expectations of him, all to a tune that somewhat resembles "Have a Cigar". It's a great song - very powerful music with potent lyrics.

My favorite piece comes next, "Poles Apart", a song directed at Gilmour's estranged ex-bandmate Roger Waters, giving a vivid account of Waters' final days with the band consumed by megalomaniacal alienation:

Hey you

Did you ever realize what you'd become?

And did you see

That it wasn't only me you were running from?

Did you know all the time but it

Never bothered you anyway?

Leading the blind while I stared out the steel in your eyes

The music has a compelling vocal melody, interesting musical contrasts (including a strange middle section), and an invitingly chiming guitar lick to frame the verses.

After that, the main highlights include "Wearing the Inside Out", Richard Wright's first lead vocal with the band since "Us and Them" (from Dark Side of the Moon, 1973). This song reminds me of Wright's solo album, Wet Dream, but with the full Floyd treatment including guest saxophone by Dick Parry, who had been so prominent on "Us and Them" all those years ago. Co-songwriter Anthony Moore provided the lyrics, which seem custom-made for Wright, as he wearily sings of his efforts to let himself be heard again after decades of silence.

In all, The Division Bell fully justifies its place in the Pink Floyd canon, regardless of your feelings for or against Roger Waters' place in the band. While I would have preferred Roger continue to work with the band, it wasn't in the cards, and Gilmour and company put out a strong final Pink Floyd album where the songwriting and  lyrics (Roger's forte) were up to the band's high standard. 

The story doesn't quite end there: The Endless River (2014) was comprised mostly of instrumental pieces realized in the rehearsals for The Division Bell. It served as a posthumous send-off for the departed Richard Wright.