Pink Floyd - The Dark Side Of the Moon (1973)

(This review is for the fortieth anniversary of this album's release on March 1, 1973.)

"We thought we could do a whole thing about the pressures we personally feel that drive one over the top . . . the pressure of earning a lot of money; the time thing, time flying by very fast; organized power structures like the church or politics; violence; aggression."

So explained Roger Waters, bassist and lyricist of Pink Floyd, on the British art rock quartet's ultimate masterpiece, The Dark Side Of the Moon. The record brilliantly explores paranoia, alienation, and fears of madness and death by giving life and voice to feelings normally addressed implicitly. Pink Floyd presents such emotions blatantly, being as direct and illuminating as the ray of prism light on the Hipgnosis-designed cover; Waters' simple lyrics strip away allegories and symbolism to reveal the essence of people's deepest frustrations and fears of a maddening world, with little room to derive subjective meaning from his words. David Gilmour's piercing guitar solos and angry vocals cut through a backwash of keyboardist Rick Wright's jazzy keyboard stylings and Nick Mason's punctuating drums, with each track blending seamlessly into another and creating a continuous, flowing soundscape throughout.

The music - from the deceptively tranquil "Us and Them," a song about mistrust and miscommunication, to the creeping and claustrophobic "Brain Damage" - is sometimes stirring, sometimes chilling, channeled through the most advanced stereo of the time and brilliantly realized by engineer Alan Parsons. Songs with one-word titles - "Breathe," "Time," "Money" - illustrate a hunger and need for more security and peace in a world that doesn't offer much of either. Waters deals with his own fears through offering a vision of a better recourse - in the gently flowing "Breathe," his lyrics urge the listeners not to be afraid to care, while the apocalyptic "Time," propelled by swooping guitars and a mocking organ along a distinctive beat of roto-tom drums, admonishes hour-frittering souls who are merely "waiting for someone or something to show you the way," rather than finding it themselves. "Money," the LP's hardest-rocking track, is a brilliant satire on consumerism and the desires money can bring; Gilmour's lead vocal suggests the attitude of someone who doesn't accept his own belief that lots of cash can buy happiness.

The most memorable sounds on The Dark Side Of the Moon, though, aren't the singing or the music; they're the numerous sound effects and embellishments that permeate the LP. Sound montages like "On the Run" jumbles sounds of maniacal laughter with synthesizer lines racing across the stereo spectrum as fast as the desperate footsteps heard beneath the surface, culminating in the sound of a plane crash. Half-heard conversations about violence, madness, and death fade in and out throughout the record. In Wright's instrumental "The Great Gig In the Sky," Clare Torry's wordless vocalizing of the act of dying says as much as Waters' own lyrics on the subject. Chiming clocks announce "Time;" "Money" is introduced by cash registers carefully syncopated to a complicated 7/4 time signature. As on most classic Floyd albums, The Dark Side Of the Moon begins and ends with the same sound - in this case, a pulsating, subdued heartbeat. As the finality of "Eclipse" fades out, the heartbeat is all that's left, lingering and fading into . . . nothing.

The Dark Side Of the Moon, in addition to being the album that put Pink Floyd on the top of the Billboard LP charts in America, stayed on the Top 200 for fifteen years. Its long run coincided with Watergate, economic contraction, terrorism, and the rise of a new, mean streak of political arch-conservatism. The biggest reason for its massive success, apart from speaking to a large, disillusioned audience, was clear enough; hanging on in quiet desperation was no longer just the English way. It was the only way.

(This is my last record review for awhile, as I need to take another break. My Sunday record review will return on March 24.)