Dark Side Of The Moon is just one of those records that almost everyone knows. Unless you live under a rock, or somewhere in an obscure forest in Lapland, or in the middle of the Sahara Desert, chances are that you have heard the song Money somewhere. If you're a tidbit more onto music, you've probably also heard the rest of the album. If you enjoy the occasional album, you've probably got it yourself, and have heard most people say it's a classic disc. And if you're a Floyd fan you'll probably be one of those people I just mentioned.
However, Dark Side of the Moon, despite being an excellent record, in my opinion is not Pink Floyd's defining work or magnum opus. Now you may think, either this guy is a heathen, or he's just idolate of The Wall. No, The Wall is a good concept disc but again it doesn't rank up there for me. That title is reserved for Wish You Were Here. However, albeit this record being overshadowed by some others, it's nevertheless a worthy listen, albeit some of it is superfluous filler which makes me want to choke a camel.
It's especially some of the instrumentals that make me want to punch a penguin in nausea. While any song with vocals on here, plus On The Run, are quite interesting to listen to, The Great Gig In The Sky is just a terrible interlude between two classic songs, and the female vocals make me want to rip my ears out in disgust. It's just horrifically pointless and completely out of tune with the rest of the disc. Any Colour You Like is irritating too, but in a totally different way; Pink Floyd redefine pretentious wankery here. It is a completely boring instrumental, which is kinda useful if you want to go to sleep but otherwise it has the attention span of a goldfish and the interest factor of a slab of concrete.
However, some songs on here are also completely out of the wazoo, that's just how good Floyd can be sometimes. Time is probably my favourite song off here, if not one of my favourite Floyd tracks ever, and it just really displays what these guys are all about; a pretty long track, a sweet solo, nice long intro, terrible to get into at first (I don't know HOW many listens it took me to like this album) but worth it in the long run. The lyrics are a stroke of genius, and contain some signature RW lines such as "Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way" or "No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun". It has that typical cynical attitude that Floyd is so famous for, and would culminate on Animals (which I by the way think is probably the most horrendously boring album Floyd have ever done.) So critical and sharp as the lyrics are on each song, the vocals kind of forget to live up to that nature. Sure, it's quiet and jazzy, but there should just be a tidbit more aggression in them to make it really convincing. Or maybe the English just can't do that, and love it when you say something in a silent, disappointed fashion, rather than just bellowing it out at you.
And that's what the rest of the record is all about, too. These guys almost never blast from your speakers at inhumane speeds, or give you a singalong chorus (only on Us And Them do they ever come close to that) everything is sweet and delicate, like a famous homemade apple pie your grandmother used to bake every Sunday you came along for coffee. It is a record that has a flow rather than one or two songs that stick out. While this in principle is excellent as I can just sit down and listen to it, it also has the problem that two tracks are just so totally out of synch with the rest that I can never fully enjoy this album as a whole, and have to skip some tracks. Sure, most of it is genius, but for this disc to be a classic, ALL of it has to be genius, which is simply not the case.
I'd like to mention one last song in reference to genius though. Brain Damage possibly has some of the most eccentric and haunting lyrics ever. It's like this album's tribute to Syd Barrett without being one. All about being crazy and totally lunatic, it again has that signature "odd" feeling of this album, without any catchy hooks yet subtle and delicate. It's written to not be noticed, rather than to be. I guess that's what you get if you're an insane maniac in a mental asylum. It's so clever, to be able to write a song that always leave you begging for that moment where you can come in and sing along, and then it just calls it quits and flows into Eclipse, which fades away like the moon before the sun.
Overall, Pink Floyd have better albums to get into their discography, Wish You Were Here is one of the best albums ever, but this is a great disc, although it has a couple of downsides to it, and is most definitely not a classic, it's an excellent record. Oh, and if you can get your hands on it, there is a remaster of it these days with upgraded sound and production, just to make this disc a little bit more pristine. Despite its obvious pretentiousness and progressive nature (which sadly is a recurring theme inside this genre, bands wanting to masturbate rather than create a record), it's quite the disc. And oh, you owe it to yourself to give it a spin if you haven't still. It's not one of the most famous discs ever for nothing.
