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...

#TheWall

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”.