Author: Peter Podbrežnik
Artist: Pink Floyd
Label: EMI Records
Release: 1969
Rating: 3/5
In the period after the exit of “mad diamond” Syd Barrett and the release of their second album “A Saucerful Of Secrets” (1968), Pink Floyd recorded the music for the film “More” at the urging of the well-known German director Barbet Schroeder. At the label’s insistence, it was then reworked, with a few sections changed, and released as their third album. In the wider collective consciousness it’s perhaps best known as their first record without Syd in the lineup, though the music itself is no slouch and offers plenty of the stuff that made Pink Floyd one of the most innovative and unique rock bands of the second half of the 60s from the very start.
The first major change in the next step of their sonic evolution, which came on this album, was without a doubt the successful integration of the then wet-behind-the-ears guitarist/vocalist David Gilmour. Here he got a completely free hand for his own musical ideas and started growing into one of the best guitarists in rock history. As a guitarist he’d already shown his exceptional potential on the predecessor, but as a singer he only really came into his own here. On “More”, bassist/vocalist Roger Waters actually let him sing all the lead vocals, which was totally unthinkable before and, for a good while, after. Waters, who a year earlier had managed to pull the band back from the brink of extinction that Syd’s eccentricities during their live shows had pushed them to, even made an effort back then to give the young guitarist a somewhat bigger role in the band’s sound than he’d had when he arrived. Considering that over the years the two became the best of “friends”, that’s hard to believe today. Perhaps the most important thing the creative process behind this album brought is that after the traumatic exit of the “mad diamond”, the band came to life as a successful, equal collective, and tried their hand at producing for the first time.
“More” is a stylistically pretty diverse album, with an almost equal number of instrumentals and vocal tracks. You’ll find plenty of different musical elements on it, some of them atypical for the band, like folk and hard rock, alongside the more characteristic experimental avant-garde creations with loads of effects and that trademark space rock vibe. The best-known (and, according to most, best) pieces on “More” are “The Nile Song”, “Green Is The Colour” and “Cymbaline”. The latter two were also regularly played live at the time. I don’t know the film’s content, so I can’t comment in detail on the differences between the film versions and the ones on the album, but I’m convinced they were noticeably improved for the studio release. As for the plot, it’s supposedly a pretty bleak existentialist drama about a couple, two hard drug addicts, who come to a sad end. Fitting enough with the end of the psychedelic era in music and in society, a fact the members of Pink Floyd were well aware of as they slowly but visibly started shaking off their psychedelic rock legacy from the Syd days. Thanks to its music, the film did of course reach cult status over the years, but that only happened many years after its release, once Pink Floyd had already become a worldwide phenomenon.
The opening “Cirrus Minor” is steeped in a surreal pastoral atmosphere. After the intro effects of chirping birds, Gilmour’s calm, hypnotic vocal drifts in along with gentle acoustic guitar accompaniment, and together they create a special, mysterious mood. Wright’s keyboards take the central position as the piece goes on, especially the booming organ with its slightly eerie undertone. The complete absence of Mason’s drums and the unusual metric structure certainly add to the surreal atmosphere too. “The Nile Song”, which also came out as a single and is without doubt one of the heaviest things in the band’s history, immediately confirms that this is an album with a varied mix of moods. I’d call it one of the very few hard rock pieces in their catalog, or even a kind of proto-metal creation. It’s marked by a punchy guitar riff, Gilmour’s atypically furious, raw vocal, solid, hard-hitting drum fills and a total absence of keyboards. Gilmour also deftly worked in a short, bluesy solo typical of him, which can’t yet compete with his later masterpieces. Alongside The Beatles classic “Helter Skelter”, “The Nile Song” can be counted among the first “metal” tracks in history. The heated mood is then calmed right away by the dreamy pastoral ballad “Crying Song”, suffused with the gentle sounds of Wright’s vibraphone and the rattle of Waters’ melodic bass. Once again Gilmour’s dreamy vocal and gentle acoustic guitar melody take center stage, creating a pleasantly romantic atmosphere. A pretty simple but very pleasant folk ballad.
On the instrumental “Up The Kyber”, Pink Floyd also show a feel for jazzy improvisation. It’s mostly a pairing of Mason’s drum solo with Wright’s experiments on a deranged piano, dissonant organ and a whole bunch of quirky effects. “Green Is The Colour” is another lovely folk ballad with Gilmour’s tender vocal and melodic accompaniment on acoustic guitar and piano. Witty flute sounds in the background heighten its ethereal Celtic touch. Next comes “Cymbaline”, which, in my opinion, is the best piece on this album, at least when it comes to arrangements and its exceptional romantic mood. The arrangements combining acoustic guitar, piano, organ, drums and bass are wonderful and testify to the band’s outstanding compositional talent. Gilmour’s romantic, dreamy vocal sits on top of an exceptionally beautiful piano and guitar melody. The song is also distinguished by Wright’s use of numerous special effects and brilliant organ passages. The lyrics are about a nightmare that is really a metaphor for the first of Waters’ cynical reckonings with the music industry. The short instrumental “Party Sequence” is a bundle of Mason’s shamanic percussion backed by a flute played by his wife Lynette. It’s one of the rare pieces in their history with an ethnic touch.
“Main Theme”, where their space rock side comes back to life more prominently, has a pretty eerie vibe that matches the film’s bleak atmosphere, which is probably why it was picked as its central theme. After the rather annoying, hissing sound of a gong comes the creepy sound of organs. Their sound, combined with unusual rhythmic patterns on bass and drums, dictates the course of the composition. Plenty of strange effects from Wright’s synthesizer add to the gloomy mood too. There are also some rather indistinct embellishments on Gilmour’s slide guitar. The hard-hitting rocker “Ibiza Bar” has a pretty similar main motif to “The Nile Song”, only here they’ve worked Wright’s keyboards in as well. Gilmour’s atypical furious vocal and his punchy guitar grinding come off as quite fun, especially compared with some of their better-known and more ambitious creations. A solid piece, and another of their rare adventures into hard rock. The short instrumental “More Blues” is an even rarer excursion into the blues, and, fittingly, it’s nothing special. Here Gilmour shows off a few of his typical blues passages, which he’s greatly upgraded over the years and put in a completely different context. “Quicksilver” is the longest and by far the most avant-garde piece on the album, packed with weird synth effects, sounds typical of musique concrete and a not-insignificant use of vibraphone. The whole thing again strongly recalls some psychedelic horror flick. They’d push this kind of avant-garde creation to the extreme, practically speaking, on their next album. “A Spanish Piece” is another very short instrumental, with a typical Spanish or Latin guitar riff and Gilmour’s obscure-leaning vocal accompaniment in the background. Here Gilmour appears in a fully solo role, without any help from the rest of the band. The closing “Dramatic Theme” is yet another short instrumental, with an identical motif to “The Main Theme”, except that its focus lies mainly on Gilmour’s guitar.
I’d say that, even though it isn’t a typical studio album, “More” is one of that handful of rock albums that started out as film music and are worth the attention of even those who’ve never seen or even heard of the film the soundtrack comes from. Its place in the Pink Floyd legacy isn’t exactly a prestigious one, which is somewhat justified when you compare it with most of their later work, but even so, despite the fact that not every experiment lands and that you can’t yet detect that later transcendental Floyd magic, I can’t find a bad piece on it. Even among their fans there are some who don’t like this album and see it only as a bunch of half-baked ideas. What bugs them most is that the band showed a few elements atypical for them, closer to folk and hard rock/blues rock than to space rock. That’s entirely their problem, because in my eyes this is more than a solid effort from a band that was still searching for its sonic identity and recorded as many as three albums within a span of a few months, which was certainly no small feat. Had “More” been conceived as a concept album, it would’ve been a pretty poor collection of unconnected pieces and would justifiably deserve criticism. As it is, though, it’s yet another completely unique album, seasoned with diverse musical ideas, which presented David Gilmour as an equal member of the band and pulled him out of Syd’s shadow. In my view “More” is even a slightly overlooked record, but for a band that created such a huge number of excellent albums, you just have to live with that. The first years without Syd were undoubtedly pretty grueling for every member of the band, as they searched for a recognizable, unique sound that would separate them for good from the psychedelic phase and the constant experimenting with all kinds of sonic patterns that came with it. Even though in this period, that is until the end of the 60s, they didn’t manage to create a single release that would establish a new, recognizable, lasting sound and bring them major commercial success at the same time, Pink Floyd of that era were one of the main driving forces of the then freshly forming progressive rock. And among the albums of that time on which they explored the new boundaries of popular music, often in avant-garde ways, this more-than-solid collection of film music undoubtedly belongs too.
Lineup
David Gilmour – vocals, guitar
Roger Waters – bass guitar, vocals
Richard Wright – organ, piano, vocals
Nick Mason – drums
Production
Pink Floyd
Tracklist
1. Cirrus Minor (5:18)
2. Nile Song (3:26)
3. Crying Song (3:33)
4. Up the Khyber (2:12)
5. Green Is the Colour (2:58)
6. Cymbaline (4:50)
7. Party Sequence (1:07)
8. Main Theme (5:28)
9. Ibiza Bar (3:19)
10. More Blues (2:12)
11. Quicksilver (7:13)
12. Spanish Piece (1:05)
13. Dramatic Theme (2:15)
Album length: 44:56
