About the Album:
Dark Side of the Moon is the rare album to achieve the trifecta of success – near-reverential critical acclaim, astronomical sales (top 5 all time), and staggering chart success (18+ years on the Billboard album chart and over 518 weeks on the UK album chart). Drummer Nick Mason said, “You’ve probably got five different things that work for it,” explaining that “the lyrics are very important, but the music is important as well, and so are the sound effects, the voices, [and] the concept.” CM
“More than just a cultural institution, Pink Floyd’s eighth album is a landmark achievement in what rock music in the 1970s could become. For the band, it represented a global smash unlike any previous release, translating their penchant for often abstract prog into a more accessible format.” PM
History:
In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, Pink Floyd were “the lead astronauts in the universe of space-rock” CS becoming “about as popular as a band could get while still being considered an underground act.” CS They burst out of the gates with 1967’s Piper at the Gates of Dawn, a psychedelic classic spearheaded by then-leader Syd Barrett. When he “disappeared into a psychedelic haze” BN and mental instability, the band carved out a new identity, leaning more towards progressive rock.
“The group’s first post-Barrett albums, 1968’s Saucerful of Secrets and 1969’s Ummagumma, were surprisingly listenable” CS and “Atom Heart Mother and Meddle had hinted at Floyd's potential.” Q The latter featured the twenty-three-minute epic “Echoes,” which suggested the themes that later emerged on Dark Side. Still, Pink Floyd’s highest-charting album in the U.S. was 1972’s Obscured by Clouds at #46 and Dark Side “was as full of bizarrities as their previous LPs” CS so no one would have expected it to become the band’s breakout success.
“The primary revelation of Dark Side of the Moon is what a little focus does for the band.” AM Previous endeavors featured “a lot of self-indulgent nonsense.” CD Dark Side was “a sturdy bridge between the blues-based psychedelia of their forebears, the avant-garde experimentation of their earlier works, and the cutting-edge electronica that was sweeping progressive bands to new levels of pomposity.” CS The band finally “ditch their primal Syd Barrett psychedelia” Q and “by condensing the sonic explorations of Meddle to actual songs and adding a lush, immaculate production to their trippiest instrumental sections, Pink Floyd inadvertently designed their commercial breakthrough.” AM
Theme:
“The band could hardly be accused of going for populist themes.” SM Dark Side “documents the fragility of the human mind in the modern world – tormented by societal contrivances and the futility of running against time.” CQ The album “takes you into a dark and eerie montage of the human condition – terrifying, moody, cynical, and heart-wrenchingly beautiful.” CQ “It is fascinating that an album whose central theme is madness” CRS “or things that drive people mad” CA “would become one of the most consistently popular albums of all time.” CRS
The band received “the kind of cult adoration usually only granted to those whose critical cachet is in direct inverse to their popular appeal.” SM Put another way, “it's a long way from Saturday Night Fever.” SM Still, because the “incredibly tight and smooth series of songs…stood up as individual efforts and as a cohesive whole” CS it made for an album that gained widespread appeal “as one of the greatest concept albums ever produced.” CS
Roger Waters came up with “an idea for a song about insanity…during the Meddle sessions. A little later, the group found themselves in Nick Mason’s kitchen discussing the idea of a suite of songs all linked together. The insanity idea was held - madness, death, aging” AD and “Waters wrote a series of songs about mundane, everyday details which aren't that impressive by themselves.” AM In fact, “they resemble a philosophical treatise much more than the outlook of an emotion-full poet…this is Doctor R. Waters, Ph.D., who has just finished adding rhymes to his latest thesis.” GS
Waters said, “When I say, ‘I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon,’ what I mean is, ‘If you feel that you’re the only one – that you seem crazy ‘cos you think everything is crazy – you’re not alone.” CM
The Music:
While Waters possesses an “almost peerless genius for writing profoundly evocative, yet unforced lyrical metaphors,” RV “the album [also] exemplifies Pink Floyd's musical range and technical virtuosity.” RV “The seeds of madness that lurk in the dreary predictability of daily life are magnified by the band’s foreboding melodies and lush textures” UT which evolve “from ponderous, neo-psychedelic art rock to jazz fusion and blues-rock before turning back to psychedelia.” AM
“When it comes to sonic exploration and experimentation, Pink Floyd picked up where The Beatles left off, and eclipsed them. Dark Side of the Moon expanded music beyond the ears and – as corny and psychedelic as it sounds – into the mind. The cinematic, surround-sound experience of the album puts you directly into the music.” CQ
“David Gilmour’s “vocals are at their best” PK and his “guitar throughout is inspired, mixing jagged blues playing with atmospheric slide motifs and chords.” SM This “catches the band at its peak -- more musically varied than the spaced-out folkie-experimental music of Floyd's earlier albums, and less prone to Roger Waters’ oppressive worldview than later albums.” PK
It is “a continuous, masterful” RV “piece of music” DD that is “lush and multi-layered.” RS It is “dense with detail, but leisurely paced.” AM “Pink Floyd doesn’t rush anything; the songs are mainly slow to mid-tempo, with attention paid throughout to musical texture and mood,” AZ consquently “creating its own dark, haunting world.” AM “Dark Side of the Moon isn't ten of the greatest tracks ever written…it's ten tracks that work brilliantly in combination - a whole more than the sum of its parts.” AD It “remains Pink Floyd at their most transcendent, a release as brilliant in construction as it is immensely cathartic.” PM
An Audiophile’s Dream:
”Much of the album had been performed live under the title of Eclipse for some time before the Floyd even entered the studio, which accounts for its instrumental cohesion. It also allowed the band time to experiment with the various segues and moods.” SM
The album was recorded over 38 days CM between June 1972 through January 1973 in London’s famous Abbey Road Studio. CA “By now the band were acknowledged masters of technology, and they utilised the latest facilities Abbey Road had to offer, ably assisted” SM by Alan Parsons, their engineer, who’d also famously worked on the Beatles’ 1969 Abbey Road album.
“From an audiophile’s standpoint” CRS “technology wise, [Dark Side] was way ahead of it’s time.” CA Parsons helped Floyd push “the audio technology of the time to the brink, and freed music beyond passive listening and into a full immersion of sound.” CQ “Copies…could always be found in hi-fi stores. Because of it's sound production, it was frequently used to demonstrate the latest range of turntables/amps/speakers as they came onto the market.” CA “Cosy couples happy in their new homes rushed out to buy copies…to play on their newly installed state-of-the-art Seventies hi-fi equipment.” AD It is “the greatest (and most black-light-friendly) headphones album of all time, hands down” E’12 and “the album of choice for a generation of herbal adventurers.” SM
”No previous album boasted such an immaculate production or such a huge load of special effects.” GS “This record is a follow-up to [The Beatles’] Sgt. Pepper with its wide variety of sound effects… and studio trickery” CRS “from stereophonically-projected footsteps and planes flying overhead (‘On the Run’) to a roomful of ringing clocks (‘Time’)” CD to “Money” with its “sampled sounds of clinking coins and cash registers turned into rhythmic accompaniment.” AZ The effects “are impressive, especially when we remember that 1973 was before the advent of digital recording techniques.” AZ
Conclusion:
“Dark Side of the Moon was a benchmark record…[it] changed things considerably for Pink Floyd.” CD “The enormous success…was a double-edged sword…the band suddenly found itself playing football stadiums to huge crowds…Creatively, it almost finished them. They briefly toyed with the idea of making an album using nothing but household objects, which must have enthralled their record company.” SM
“Pink Floyd may have better albums,” AM but “when it comes to their best album, however defined, it's just too hard to avoid Dark Side of the Moon. Sure, its insights are probably more meaningful to stoned teenagers with headphones than to adults listening carefully to the lyrics. But…it still makes for a consistently enjoyable listening experience.” PK “No other record defines them quite as well as this one.” AM
The Songs:
Here’s thoughts on each of the individual songs from the album.
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