Meddle: The Other Tracks

It's totally, like, a camel or something.

It's pretty much a general agreement that Pink Floyd are one of those bands where, if you have never listened to them, you don't know shit about music. They're also one of the many bands which have been surrounded in controversy and dispute. One of those bands with a dramatic history, a woeful, Beatles-esque break-up with the band slowly dissipating from the inside. One band that many fans relate to due to the way they expand on  elements of the human condition, such as the various stages mental breakdown on their obscure 1973 b-sides collection, The Dark Side of the Moon.

It's for these many reasons that Pink Floyd have gathered such a dedicated, loyal fanbase over a forty-year span. They "encompassed" many common aspects of music which people can connect with. Meddle, however, is a strange entry to Pink Floyd's discography. Rather than connect each song with some underlying concept or theme like so many of their records (including their earlier works), Meddle just displays Floyd at a time when they were unsure of who they were, what their music was classed as, and where they were going next. As opposed to some of their previous records which were heavily experimental, such as Ummagumma and A Saucerful of Secrets, the albums sounds "lighter". While that is in no means a bad thing, and Meddle is still an experimental album, it's evident that Floyd showed much more restraint in the creation of this album, rather than writing a collection of avante-garde, downright insane music (Careful With That Axe, Eugene). It also seems to be the first Pink Floyd album to shape that defining, overarching melancholy across almost all of their next records. After that, you can't read the title of a Floyd song without a desolate, empty moan of a voice in your head. Cheery!

The sad thing is that Meddle is often remembered not as a collection of songs, but just for the album's signature track: Echoes, Pink Floyd's twenty-minute epic. In this post, I'd like to talk about the other songs that turned a good album into a great album. Besides, everyone's heard and analyse Echoes to death by now.

The album features one of Floyd's most atmospheric openers: One of These Days. The wind fades in. It glides and echoes across your speakers. You're drawn into this world of vacancy and desolation. A single, beefy bass note. Oh, that's some nice reverb right there. There it goes again. Waters begins to play that awesome sludgy bass groove. Gilmour flies in on the left channel, doing the same. Wright comes in and hits some really consistent, long synth keys. We get that tease of drums from Mason. Gilmour chucks out his bass and adds some guitar wankery to the mix. This track really builds on atmosphere on tension until all Hell breaks loose to the command of some demonic, hellspawn of Nick Mason.

ONE OF THESE DAYS I'M GOING TO CUT YOU INTO LITTLE PIECES!

The second track, A Pillow of Winds is a light, acoustic number. It's lyrical theme: Love. That's a rare one for Floyd. Then again, I imagine prog rock musicians don't get that many groupies. "Hey, baby. I can play in 24/16." On a personal level, I never really paid much attention to this track. I always thought it was a little dull, the token acoustic track to take the edge off the ostentatious opening track. That being said, it's not a bad song by all means, and gives the listener a few minutes to catch a breath before the next track kicks in:
Fearless.

The third track on Meddle, Fearless, is the second to continue a consistently mellow mood through the album. It's a very calm track, and a great example of Floyd pulling themselves away from the strange and avante-garde to write better music in terms of songwriting. The main guitar riff is a memorable one, and one of Floyd's finest, in my opinion, with Gilmour tweaking bits of it throughout the song, as if to say, "Chill guys, we're still trying to break musical boundaries and stuff", The song ends rather strangely with a cheap fade into a football crowd cheering Rodger's and Hammerstein's "You'll Never Walk Alone". I never really understood the lyrics to the song, then again, I'm not really a football fan.

Track four, San Tropez. Jazz influences. Upbeat, mellow tone. I'm liking this already. This song show's Pink Floyd's songwriting skills in a slightly more (cringe) accessible vein. A short, "click your fingers and sing along" track. Again, not a bad thing. This track beats A Pillow of Winds into a savage pulp in terms of coolness. It's the sort of track you want to listen to while sitting on a beach with a glass of wine. Wearing a suit, no tie, collar slightly undone. The slide guitar solo from Gilmour is fantastic aswell, rising and falling like waves across a beach, again adding to the central atmosphere of the song. The track's topped off with a jazzy piano outro from Wright. Perfect.

The penultimate track, Seamus, is very easy to criticise. It is often cited as one of the moments where Floyd threw themselves off the deep end in terms of lyrical and musical composition. The end result was a short, two and a half minute song which is just a bit too barmy for the listener. It's a parody of sorts of the traditional blues song, as Gilmour sings about the happenings of his himself, his kitchen, and his dog. The monotony of the lyrics are however, often ignored in favour of the song's subject: Seamus the Dog. Barking. Welping. Throughout the entire song. The constant barking throughout the song has branded Seamus Floyd's worst song among many of their fans. I, however, enjoy the song! Well, enjoy's probably not the right word. The idea of a pseudo-blues song which teeters on the edge of "too-experimental" appeals to me, somehow. It's a rather clever parody, a sort-of pre-Spinal Tap moment. Finally, as for the Seamus the Dog: I find the barking rather cute, and I'm not even a dog person.

Well, that's it, I suppose. You now have a long, drawn out reason to listen to Pink Floyd's Meddle!