Music Review: Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here

Three-fifths of Wish You Were Here has that perfect future music feel to it which every space-rock lover is permanently searching for.

Here a track-by-track:

Shine On (part one) - 9

Has the most amazing beginning of an album I've ever heard: we all know how it goes...if you don't then you should.

Welcome To The Machine - 8

This would be a 10 if it was instrumental! The synth-play is simply amazing and it seeps into the next song perfectly. The singing spoils it in that it reminds you the music is made by humans and not by some artificial life 2000 years from now.

Have A Cigar - 6

After over a decade I still haven't warmed to this song...it just seems so out of place and doesn't have the warmth and likeability of the title track. There's little doubt the guitar work and Roy Harper's singing are spot-on but it feels like a better-produced Obscured By Clouds number.

Wish You Were Here - 9

Tragically, I recently heard The Beatless Sense Mongers cover this and have struggled to take the original as seriously as I used to. Which is why Comfortably Numb will always be a 10-score as resistent as it is to any form of piss-taking and why the title track is only a 9...but it still is one of Pink Floyd's most lovely moments.

Shine On (part two) - 11!

THIS-IS-JUST-UNSPEAKABLY-BRILLIANT!! This with Atom Heart (the suite) and The Trial are my all-time favourite Floyd moments. Okay Money and Great Gig too...and Interstellar Overdrive...and (more).

It's enough to say that Shine On Part Two is dancy, tripped-out spacefunk with Gilmour's greatest solo and inhuman efforts from everyone else.

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Although Have A Cigar is average, and Welcome has some iffy vocals, this is clearly a 5-star album because it features simply some of the best music you'll ever hear.