• AllMyVinyl #64
• Band: Pink Floyd
• Album Title: The Endless River
• Release Date: 10 Nov 2014
• Date purchased: 10 Nov 2020
• Location purchased: Amazon
• Color of vinyl: black
• Number of discs: 2
• Links: [ Wikipedia | Discogs | Band Website | Complete album on Youtube ]

This one will be unlike most reviews.  Not because of length, but because this album is very hard to write about in the way I’ve done this series to this point – because I usually break down the album tracks.  That’s mega hard to do here for reasons which will be obvious as I go on.

First off, I’m doing this album today (10 Nov 2024) as it’s 10 years to the day since it was released – 10 Nov 2014.  For the most part, I’m doing this vinyl series in alphabetical order (by album title), but from time to time when the mood strikes or there’s a relevant anniversary (or a sad death), I’ll bring things out of alphabetical order to do them.  That’s the reason I’m doing “Endless River, The” today (how it’s listed in my spreadsheet).    Anyway, on to the album…

This is the final studio album in the catalog of Pink Floyd.  It’s called “The Endless River”.  Its title comes from lyrics in the last song on the Floyd album before this (Division Bell’s “High Hopes”).  If this had to be given a theme, it’s basically “The Division Bell Part II”.  I say that because when Floyd recorded The Division Bell in 1993/1994, they recorded a LOT of music, and there was talk at the time of that being a double studio album.  It obviously wasn’t.  So a lot of recorded material went unused.  Now Endless River isn’t quite “let’s take the old shit and stick it out there.  There’s more to it than that, but the bulk of the material from this is things that were recorded by the Floyd lineup of Gilmour / Mason / Wright / Pratt for the Division Bell album.  In between then and now, Rick Wright died (15 Sep 2008), about five years before this album came out, so I remember reading at the time that David & Nick wanted to release this stuff to honor their fallen comrade – let it be heard.  So they started working on picking out the best bits, cleaning up with some additions guitar and drum work, and polishing the lot together for release.

That led us to the surprise announcement in early 2014 that there was about to be a brand new Pink Floyd studio album.  Now most bands at this time, especially legacy artists generally had their future releases known.  Even if we didn’t know all the details, you generally have an idea that something might happen.  But not this time – especially not for me.  In July 2014, Polly Sampson (David’s wife) let the word out there was an imminent new Pink Floyd release coming.  It was a surprise to me – it came out of nowhere.  I remember when I read that for the first time actually saying out loud to the house “Holy shit – I can’t believe that!”  When I was asked what was going on, I said “There’s going to be a new Pink Floyd album”. My wife who isn’t as in the weeds as I am with all this said “It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?”  It was – at that time, it was 10 years since Division Bell, so a surprise Pink Floyd album was a major surprise.

This was the era of digital music for sure, so for The Endless River, I bought the album on iTunes (we didn’t have “Apple Music” yet).   So this one was the first one in this series I’m writing about where my original purchase was purely digital, no physical version was purchased originally.  It wasn’t until in the back half of 2020 when I bought this in a physical format – the double vinyl release of the thing, which I found for a decent price as I went to collect nearly all the Pink Floyd studio albums on vinyl – not all but most.

If you watch the album’s EPK (which I embedded below on my website), David talks about how releasing a full album in the digital age of music is – he speaks to songs, and whatnot.  He mentions this album was made for folks who still enjoy listening to an entire album in one go, and that’s exactly what this album feels like.  It really feels like one giant song (except for the last part which I’ll get to later).  While there’s parts of it that sound radically different than other parts, if you listen to it it one go, it really does sound like one giant song – something that’s helped a bit I think listening to it digitally vs on the actual vinyl.  The reason for that is the vinyl requires you to flip/change discs 3 times, on digital you can press play once.  I only bring that up, because a continuous play helps enormously the feel of it being one giant song when you don’t have the act of flipping a record album to play the other side.  Speaking of that if you look at the picture I included of the physical vinyl playing, you’ll see there’s a LOT of dead space here.  That’s the case on all four sides – I always wondered if they could have wedged it into three sides.  Definitely couldn’t have fit it on two, but if they put it on three vs four sides.  Ah well, it just makes for shorter sides that you have to change quicker – a minor quibble.  Oddly for a vinyl series I seem to be expounding on the reasons why digital works better than vinyl, but that’s kind of where this train of thought led me.

Musically, the album kind of goes all over the place.  I’m definitely NOT doing track by track, as that’s nearly impossible – in fact other than the one song with vocals, I always have to look up what the actual song titles are for this one, because in my head I think of it all as “The Endless River”.  Full disclosure: I used the Shazam app on my phone several times when listening to this vinyl.  For example, there’s a part on Side 2 that’s officially called “Side 2, Pt. 2: Skins” which has a really nice drum beat by Nick Mason that makes me tap my toes.  There’s a nice piano bit called “Anisina” which flows with some understated guitar work by Gilmour.  One of the coolest bits is in the song “Autumn 68” when they found a tape of Rick Wright playing (illegally, since they weren’t supposed to be doing that) the pipe organ at the Royal Albert Hall before they played a show there.  That tape was resurrected and inserted into this album – the only “new” material for the album by Rick, and it’s great to envision.  As the bulk of this album generates an ethereal feel, I can quite easily listen to this and SEE Rick playing the organ in my mind.  As far as I know there’s no visual of it, but in a way, I think what my mind conjures up seeing Rick play might be better than the reality of it.

The two tracks I wanted to speak to individually because they stick out the most are “Talkin’ Hawkin” and “Louder Than Words”.  That’s because they’re the only two songs with vocals on them.  The first one feels like a sequel to the song “Keep Talking” from The Division Bell.  That’s because it is.  It has more “speech” by Steven Hawking on it.  The original song from 1994 had a bunch of that, and this one has more of it.  Wasn’t newly recorded, it’s some unused bits from the former, but the latter because of it being Hawking again really sounds like a sequel song.  It’s shorter here than in the former, but it definitely evokes The Division Bell more than any other song on the album.   That brings us to “Louder Than Words”.  It’s the only “proper song” on the album complete with lyrics, the band, and well, a music video too. :)   It closes the album, and is the coda to Floyd.  The lyrics were 100% written by Polly Sampson and for me I felt were about well, Roger & David.  The first line of lyric is “We bitch and we fight.. diss each other on sight”.  I later found out Polly wrote those lyrics about the time the four guys were there at Live8 for the their reunion (and final performance together).  She said this..  “And what struck me was, they never spoke. They don’t do small talk, they don’t do big talk. It’s not hostile, they just don’t speak.”  I know a lot of people dissed the single when it was released, I think because it wasn’t some big mega song like some Floyd singles have been in the past, but as an overall band ending track, I thought it worked well.  Oh sure, I would have loved to have had Roger make an appearance on it, but that was never going to happen.  As it is, I like the song.

Given the VAST majority of this album is ambient sounds and instrumentals, it lends itself to a continuous listen – something I’ve already spoken to.  But when I’m in the right frame of mind, this album succeeds marvelously.  The overall feel flows from one track to another quite well.  So much so part of me wishes this was edited together to be one single song with no song breaks on the digital side.  That’s impossible on vinyl, but I would have loved that on the digital format.  The entire thing has a weird feel that makes me feel some things I remember from when I used to get high – but completely straight.  The music on here goes really well with the cover art – which after I heard it thought was COMPLETELY brilliant – floating on a river of air, speaking to the loss of Rick. That most of it was recorded on David Gilmour’s houseboat that is permanently on the River Thames works well for me.  It all comes together well, and IMO, ends recorded Pink Floyd perfectly (except there was one more single later on after this, but I’ll get to that another time).

If you’re someone who only gets into Floyd for things like “Learning to Fly”, “Dogs”, or “Another Brick Pt 2”, then this might NOT be for you.  I won’t lie and say this will rank highly on people’s lists of “favorite Pink Floyd” albums.  Hell, on my own list it isn’t up there.  But..  If you’re willing to open your mind and let the music flow through you, you’ll find an experience that’s very pleasant, easy on the ears, and one that can bring joy to you.

It did for me.  Thanks to David & Nick for doing this work and putting this out.  I rather enjoyed it.  Rest in peace Rick.