• AllMyVinyl #25
• Band: David Gilmour
• Album Title: About Face
• Release Date: 5 Mar 1984
• Date purchased: 11 Sep 2024
• Location purchased: Discogs Marketplace
• Color of vinyl: black
• Number of discs: 1
• Links: [ Wikipedia | Discogs | Band Website | Complete album on Youtube ]

This is David Gilmour’s second solo album, released in 1984.  It was produced and recorded in the death gasps of the Roger Waters era of Pink Floyd.  After their 1983 album “The Final Cut”, Waters & Gilmour went off and produced solo albums.  Gilmour being more the music guy than Waters produced an album that was more accessible I think than Waters’ solo output.  I did like Waters’ Hitchhiking album (I’ll get to that later in the series), but About Face is to me the better album.  It’s got lighter more pop songs, and doesn’t require you to work to enjoy what’s going on.  When it came out I was 18 and in college, so it was right up my alley.

I bought it on cassette tape back in the day – I never owned this on vinyl in the 80’s.  So when it came time to do this series, I realized I had no Gilmour solo material (except his newest album from 2024, which again I’ll get to later).  I noticed David hasn’t reprinted this album in bloody forever, so I had to go look around for used stuff.  Found a copy in fair shape on Discogs Marketplace at a good price.  It actually showed up TODAY (18 Sep), so it immediately went into the project, as it’s alphabetically behind.  :)

Musically, this album sounds a bit like the age it was produced in – mid 80’s.  Not like it sounds like Depeche Mode or something (ugh), but the overall sound of the album is a little less in your face like some of his material is.  David’s guitar sound is too strong to be muted or anything – it’s here, but there’s alot other stuff going on.  For example the big single “Blue Light” had a horn section, which is rather unlike him.  Now that isn’t BAD, I really liked the song, but it’s not what I would consider to be standard Gilmour.  Something like the song “Cruise” has an odd sound, and there’s some orchestration which sounds like Floyd for sure.  But in my mind I’ve always felt this was more a product of the era, and I rarely listened to it in full lately.  This is despite DEVOURING it when it was new.

I saw the tour, too.  It was the first time I’d seen anyone from Pink Floyd live.  He played a 3,000 seater in the Philly suburbs (The Tower Theater).  He played three nights in a row there, sold them ALL out.  I don’t recall which of the specific shows I went to, but I remember the show itself fairly well.   I was so taken by the show, it’s become one glorious blur, but I do recall geeking out to the Floyd live tracks (especially Comfortably Numb), and that guitar solo – man.  Loved it.  His drummer for the tour was Chris Slade, who I’d see a few years later in AC/DC.  That was great.  But the best part is he had multiple encores.  The audience would thin out after the first one – I mean everyone expects one encore.  But he had four of them!  The last one was a total fake out, as the house lights came up, and nearly everyone had gone, but Dave came back out and played a single song.  If memory serves it was “Near the End”, but I could be wrong about that.  Whether that track was right or wrong doesn’t really matter, it was a great concert experience.  I wish it exists on video, but I’ve never seen bootlegs of these shows, would love him to release it, but I know it wasn’t recorded professionally.

As for the music – there’s a lot of guest stars on this album.  Steve Winwood, Anne Dudley, Bob Ezrin (who also produced), Jon Lord, to name a few.  However, two songs were written by Pete Townsend of the Who (Love on the Air & All Lovers are Deranged).  Despite that, it never felt like a guest star album – it felt like a David Gilmour album.

I listened to it twice today. First time I enjoyed it for sure, but when I finished it the second time, the old joy of the album clicked in.  I’m not doing an all tracks breakdown here, but I’ll say a few things..

Blue Light – the first single, and I think the only one with a proper music video produced.  I recall there being a backlash against the song because of the horn section that goes through it.  It’s definitely more “musically up” than the last several bits of music released by Dave.  Even Dave’s first solo album wasn’t that big of an in your face album, and the last several Floyd studio albums before this (The Wall, Animals, Wish You Were Here) definitely were not like this.  So in some regard, this was very different, but I ADORED it.  I saw the video quite a lot on MTV back in the day when it was new.  Watched it a ton.  One personal bit here, Dave’s look was headed towards the version we knew from the Waterless Floyd era for sure, but still had some of the older look.  But for me – I thought Dave looked like my father – who had taken off – my parents split up about 5 years before this.  My father doesn’t particularly look like David Gilmour, but in the video for Blue Light he did.  So maybe there was some subconscious draw to the song for me there.  Hard to tell, but I still love the song all these years later despite that.

All Lovers are Deranged – probably the closest to a hard rock song here, Dave’s guitar work in the bridge area is excellent.  Love the vibe here.

Near the End – I loved how the lyrics to this start…  “And when you feel you’re near the end, will you just turn it over and start again?”  Now the rest of the song’s lyrics aren’t about music – but I always felt that lyric was about the record album itself.  Got to the end, are you going to play it again?  That’s def not what those lyrics really mean, but it’s what I thought.  :)

Murder – I could have sworn there was a music video for this, but apparently I’m wrong.  I included a live version of that below.  But I adored this track.  It’s a slow burn of the track – similar to what I imagine actual murder would be like – always adored that marriage of lyric and musical construction.  By the time the song is over, it’s quite strong with the line of lyric “On your own admission you raised up the knife and you brought it down ending another man’s life”.  One of my favorite tracks from this album.

The rest of the album has some great guitar work from Dave, and some good orchestration scattered through a few of the songs.  Then there was something like “Let’s Get Metaphysical” which is an instrumental, but it’s not typical Gilmour guitar work (although his guitar is in here), it’s got a sound that’s kind of hard to describe.  In some ways it reminds me of what you’d get if you took the guitar intro from the Floyd song “Sorrow” and expanded it out to a full song.  In fact, I had forgotten how good the Metaphysical song was until I heard it again today.

Anyway this afternoon, I was chatting with a friend of mine tonight about this album who likes Gilmour, but didn’t know this album.  This is how I described it to him – “If you like Gilmour and like Floyd – especially the version of Floyd without Roger Waters, you’ll love this.”  Had no grand plan in saying that, but it works as a great summation of this album.  Oddly David himself doesn’t seem to care for this anymore.  He doesn’t play anything from the album anymore, and it was never reissued.  I read something not that long ago where he says he doesn’t feel a connection to the music anymore.   That’s a shame, as I loved it when it was new, and I really enjoyed it again today – 40 years later.

Hopefully he changes his mind and does something with an updated version at some point.