Pink Floyd's David Gilmour is one of the finest purveyors of electric guitar soloing ever to walk this here earth. His tone and phrasing are sublime, as is his ability to conjure up dreamy, meditative soundscapes. While those traits are typically exquisite on ‘Rattle That Lock’, his first solo album in nine years, the same flaws that have plagued his output for the previous three decades remain.
Gilmour's last effort - 2006's 'On An Island' - found him in a good place, having reformed Floyd's classic line-up for Live 8 a year earlier and buried the hatchet with Roger Waters in the process. The result was a lovely collection of ambient tunes awash with a warm breeze of contentment.
By way of contrast, 'Rattle That Lock' is more sombre and reflective. Arriving a year after Floyd's instrumental swansong, 'The Endless River', it feels like the work of a man in the twilight of his life mulling over love, losses and regrets.
Faces Of Stone recalls his mother succumbing to dementia, its waltzing verses embellished by a Parisian-flavoured accordion before desperately sad piano chords and weeping fretwork.
Similarly, the ghostly hymn A Boat Lies Waiting pays tribute to late Floyd keyboard player Richard Wright, gently floating on an angelic chorus of voices that includes the feathery harmonies of Graham Nash and David Crosby.
Familiar Floydian traits nourish the album's three instrumental pieces, but all out jazz number The Girl In The Yellow Dress is a slow-burning surprise. With help from Jools Holland's piano, walking double bass and Robert Wyatt's cornet, its lyrics bring the flirty woman and cool-cat band to life in your mind's eye.
Two carpe diem cuts bookend the album's melancholic centre, with the title track's ‘80s rock ‘n' soul crispness and funked-up groover Today driven by the popping bass of Guy Pratt. The former is surely the only song in history to sample a jingle from a French railway station and combine it with lyrics inspired by Milton's Paradise Lost.
There are too many one note tracks dotted at the middle of this record as mellowness prevails, but that wouldn't be a huge gripe if a stronger thematic core informed their content. Gilmour, who shared writing duties on a number of songs with his wife, the author and lyricist Polly Samson, has described the album as being about “the thoughts you might have during the course of a day”, and such vagueness is telling.
It starts out strongly, like the guitarist is going through a deep, introspective journey. Then the lyrically cliched In Any Tongue – itself a show-stopping piece of music with a phenomenal solo - switches perspective to a soldier suffering from PTSD, while subsequent tracks are not tethered to any consistent viewpoint or narrative thread.
Following one character's specific arc would have been much more satisfying and meaningful, but that underdeveloped, somewhat lazy, approach to the conceptual aspect has always hampered the guitarist's music following Floyd's split with Waters.
At 69 years of age, maybe it's unfair to expect Gilmour to change the habits of his lifetime. But with a little more diligence given to the record's overall cohesiveness, this could have been a truly great album, rather than a pretty good one.
David Gilmour Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Sun October 18 2015 - LONDON KOKO
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