David Gilmour is someone who has made a career by letting his guitar do the talking. Rather than emerging on stage in a blaze of laser light to sing a song everyone knows – that does happen, but much later – he begins his instantly sold-out run of six nights at the Albert Hall with an arguably more characteristic motion. He shuffles slowly backwards in the dark, and plays two back-to-back instrumentals from his two most recent solo albums.
If at first it seems odd, there may be more wisdom in this move than is immediately obvious. You might not have a particularly deep relationship with “5AM” and “Black Cat”, but there’s a larger point being made here. Even if those songs are minor, they are instantly recognisable as being built from his sound. And that sound is much as it was in 1971: bright and glassy, a weaponised mellow.
As much as his former Pink Floyd bandmate Roger Waters might like to diminish Gilmour as simply being a good guitarist and a nice singer, his remarks really only serve to illustrate Waters’ limitations as a conceptual thinker. Gilmour’s ownership of this sound – to be clear, the classic Pink Floyd sound – is an extremely persuasive card to hold. In the past, he has resorted to unnecessarily territorial remarks on the poster (“The voice and guitar of Pink Floyd”). These days, it should be abundantly clear to anyone hearing the band launch into “Luck And Strange”, Gilmour singing at the top of his range about the creation moment of the 1960s generation, and how the guitar could be your passport to unimaginable worlds, exactly who he is, where he comes from, and what he continues to be a part of.
The full review will be in Uncut’s Review Of The Year issue, out November 8th. You can pre-order yours here
The latest Ultimate Music Guide: Pink Floyd Solo is out on Friday. You can pre-order your copy here