Once a year, usually at the start of summer, I go on a #PinkFloyd binge. Musically, this album is brilliant, but as a whole it’s so dark and twisted, I’ve thought many times how unlikely it was that this album was so phenomenally popular.
I listened to this when I was young enough to not have any clue what “break my balls” meant, but my true immersion was the year after high school graduation (‘87) when I’d listen in my car, volume at 11, likely 10,000 times.
Decades later...
it has become deep and nuanced in meaning, and I know now why I love Gilmour’s guitar most of all: the way the notes linger while they pull at your heart and then once caught, the notes cascade down as you tumble with them. No other guitar is as emotionally articulate.
The album has other, darker emotional connotations that I’ll write about next. It’s truly a pivotal album, the ultimate concept album in every sense of that word. It ended a musical era, with a finale as huge as “In the Flesh”.
“The Wall”— political Show more
“The Wall”— A little secret Show more
“The Wall”— emotional Show more
It’s hard to comprehend how a specific narrative of a rock star with severe issues can feel so universal: trauma, self-imposed isolation, violent anger, emotional numbness, disconnection from people, from reality...
I can’t listen it without careful consideration. My ability to relate to the emotional story deepened as the decades passed, dangerously. I’ve moved away from it again. Today I had enough anger to crawl inside, but not so much as to get trapped. Truly cathartic.