Wish You Were Here Review

WISH YOU WERE HERE

PINK FLOYD

1975

Harvest, Columbia/CBS

Prod. by Pink Floyd

Is it strange that I am finding Wish You Were Here to be Pink Floyd’s most depressing disc? I mean, it’s far less depressing than The Final Cut, but that is largely because The Final Cut is mostly unlistenable. But Wish You Were Here evokes sadness different from that of the following Waters-focused albums. While a juvenile form of the cynicism that envelops Animals and the first disc of The Wall slithers into the album, it is bookended by mournful odes; while still personal, they are a more shared experience, based upon the mental degradation of former Floyd frontman Syd Barrett. While the album is largely dedicated to his memory, it lives beyond it, and intimate knowledge of the band’s history should not be necessary to enjoy the simple elegance of the album.

The dynamics of Pink Floyd are on pure display here. The music shifts from gorgeous to spacey to aggressive to rollicking time and time again, and no song is longer or shorter than it probably should be. These aren’t playlist songs, though; “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” a gorgeous ballad with multiple shifts, is split into two fifteen minute parts, and even the shortest song, the cynical “Have A Cigar,” is over five minutes long. Still, there’s a dramatic shift between Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here; Dark Side of the Moon carried far more jazz in its roots, while Wish You Were Here is a more rock-focused album.

While the lyrics and songwriting credits shift largely from guitarist David Gilmour to bassist Roger Waters, Wish You Were Here is home to most of Gilmour’s best guitar work. While Dark Side of the Moon has already come and gone, and though “Comfortably Numb” looms on the horizon, none of his work places quite as much emphasis on beauty as Wish You Were Here. Both “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” and “Wish You Were Here” carry long sections where Gilmour’s guitar is given first chair, and it is the most melodic and sustained in his career. His acoustic guitar playing receives a limelight almost throughout, the only exception being “Have A Cigar,” perhaps the most open and brazen torching of the music industry Pink Floyd has ever put out, with rollicking guitar lines throughout.

Sadly, the musical anarchy of these critiques is facile in comparison to Dark Side of the Moon’s “Money,” and both “Welcome to the Machine” and “Have A Cigar” simply feel out of place between the more personal dedications of the bookends. Waters isn’t a master of this cynicism yet, and the digs at the industry almost feel token. They are definitely musically interesting, though; “Welcome to the Machine,” in particular, has a lot of great acoustic guitar work, the sort that The Wall uses on “Is There Anybody Out There?” to great effect. And keyboardist/synthesizer wizard Richard Wright goes into hysterics throughout, proving his efficacy to the band with “Machine” and “Diamond” time and time again. But “Machine” and “Have A Cigar” are too broad and impersonal to be more than musically interesting; “Machine” would have fit better on Meddle or Side Two of The Wall, while “Have A Cigar” is the sort of boogie that could have divided “Goodbye Blue Skies” and “Empty Spaces” moderately well.

The larger narrative of Wish You Were Here is confused; the critiques of the music industry simply feel out of place next to the beautiful ballads bookending the album, and a longer middle section might have made the album feel a little more complete. The critiques seem to echo a sort of regret or envy for the type of music Barrett would have liked to keep making, a sensation that Pink Floyd had “sold out.” However, this bitterness is still too distant to truly be affecting; on Wish You Were Here, all one needs to follow is the mourning this group of friends feels towards the loss of the one who brought them all together. Or simply play audience to a group of extremely talented musicians playing the most simplistic and beautiful soundscapes they’ve accomplished thus far.

4/5

HIGHLIGHTS: “Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I-V)”, “Wish You Were Here”, “Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts VI-IX)”

MISSED OPPORTUNITIES: “Welcome to the Machine,” “Have A Cigar”

CATALOG CHOICE: The Wall (Note: For those looking to understand what kind of musical mind Barrett was, check out Piper At The Gates of Dawn)

NEXT STOP: Yes, “Close To The Edge”

AFTER THAT: The Who, “Tommy”