Whoa. Stumbled on this today. Looks like it dates back to 2013 or thereabouts. The young Sigismund wrote it good!
If I were ranking the discography today, Album #13 would at least be above Album #11; Album #10 would be in the top five; Album #9 would probably be a little higher too, because the 2019 remix/update, with Nick Mason's re-recorded drum parts, SLAYS; Album #4 would be awarded the top slot; and Album #1 would be a lot lower, because I suddenly realized this year that I don't actually care much for Tracks 1 and 5. Also, very significantly, Fire on Fire's Haystack is now tied with the song on Album #2 that I call "the best song I have ever heard."
Otherwise, though, what can I say? This dude knows his Floyd.
I've been listening to Pink Floyd since I was six or seven years old; some sixteen years down the line, here's how I rank their studio discography. Lest anyone take unduly great offense, the fact is that I enjoy all of these; and even if I didn't, they're so much a part of my life by now that it'd be weird not to listen to them regularly!
14. Ummagumma
What's ranked here is just the studio album, to be fair to the rest of this studio-only list. It's an interesting product, Stage Two Floyd at their most happily bizarre, and it half-works: David's Narrow Way is very good, Grantchester Meadows an attractive precursor to the second side of Atom Heart Mother, and Several Species of Animals... simply delightful. Nick's piece is kinda just there, but Rick's borders on unlistenable. The thing as a whole is a hodgepodge, not even trying to hold together... but of course that was the whole point going in, and therein too lies the charm.
13. The Wall
Ambitious, dramatic and relentlessly intense, The Wall is an album you can love or hate but can't ignore. I grew up adoring the whole double album and in many ways it still holds me in its talons; I might not enjoy it as much as the rest of the band's discography anymore, but its power over me has barely waned. I think that, as released, it's somewhat overdone and has too much of Roger before his solo vision really flowered (in The Pros & Cons of Hitch-Hiking), but Disc 2 is tremendous. If I weren't such a whole-album diehard, I would knock the album up several places on its strength alone.
12. More
For a long time, More was my least favorite album in the discography. There was never a time when I didn’t like Cymbaline or Green is the Colour, but the rest of the album I found either too sad and sinister (Cirrus Minor, Main Theme) or too boring (Crying Song, Quicksilver). Despite (or because of?) my relatively low opinion of More I would periodically return to it and over the years my regard grew. It certainly works differently than any other Pink Floyd album (except, maybe, its similarly whimsical follow-up Ummagumma) and it takes a particular mood to appreciate it all the way through. But when it hits, it hits.
11. The Dark Side of the Moon
I think that Dark Side is severely flawed, but a real slice of musical grandeur nonetheless. It is a stronger concept album than it is an album, so to speak; that is, the lyrics, structure, and journey it takes you on are all world-class but there are missteps in the delivery. The album also suffers by comparison to its little brother Obscured by Clouds, which sees the band showcasing all the same strengths but with superior songwriting and no unnecessary adornments. Dark Side's best feature is its unsettling atmosphere, the anxiety that does not let up. To this day it makes me uncomfortable.
10. The Final Cut
Where The Wall was allegorical, The Final Cut is political—Pros & Cons will be personal—and Roger’s dark vision here is more purely distilled, more caustic, more shiver-inducing than it was on The Wall... not to mention the merry little fact that the album’s story ends with nuclear apocalypse. And while you won’t hear David Gilmour apotheosize the electric guitar as he did on Comfortably Numb, you do get several short bursts of solos that are among his best and most evocative guitar work on record, solos all the more striking for their brevity and infrequency.
9. A Momentary Lapse of Reason
The first Floyd album without Roger Waters is a partial remergence of the band’s early-to-mid ‘70s soul; signs of life, indeed! Waters had come to dominate the band to such a degree in the preceding decade that it took his exit to make much of what made their earlier work wonderful resurface. Momentary Lapse is, in turn, David’s album: these are all his songs (a few among the best he has penned) and it’s his arrangement decisions and, above all, his guitar that make the record shine. His smooth, melodic voice sounds grand after three straight albums of Roger’s vitriol. The '80s production wears on some tracks (poor One Slip) but it's not as damaging as it might've been.
8. Atom Heart Mother
The title track is Stage Three Floyd firing all cylinders, crafting their first long piece in which there's no section that drags—but even this self-assured display of powers, grand and masterly, was merely a warm-up run for the following year’s Echoes. The group tones things down for the remainder of the album, which contains the most concentrated appearance of the short-lived agrarian/rustic Floyd sound (acoustic guitars, soft vocals, slow tempos and relatively straightforward arrangements). Summer '68 especially, though the least rustic, is fantastic! But If and Fat Old Sun aren't far behind. It's a lovely little stretch, those three middle tracks.
7. A Saucerful of Secrets
Pink Floyd begin to find their footing after Syd Barrett’s inadvertent stepdown from the position of band leader. Syd gets one song in nevertheless and it’s one of his best as well as the album highlight, but what's surprising coming after Piper is that the other members, including newbie David Gilmour on guitar, are so capable of holding their songwriting own. Rick Wright’s ethereal Remember a Day is the only one that manages to nip at the heels of Jugband Blues but the other numbers are solid too, maintaing a somewhat Syd-like whimsy while also branching out to the spacey and the ragged.
6. The Division Bell
There’s something about David Gilmour’s playing here that makes me think of a festival. It's not just that High Hopes opens and closes with the ringing of a bell, which conjures thoughts of Chrono Trigger's Millennial Fair… well, I can't place it exactly, but for me, that kind of feeling on a modern rock album by none other than the giants of the genre is an enormous treat. The album contains several of both David’s best songs and his best solos. A huge advantage of Roger’s departure was just how much freer David clearly felt to adorn songs with prominent lead guitar. No less significantly, Rick Wright returns!
5. Animals
Though musically about as great an album as I've ever heard, Animals is a scary piece of work. Edgy, abrasive, angry (personal relationships in the band were swiftly deteriorating and conditions in the studio were miserable; you can hear the band taking their frustration out on the songs, though to productive effect), misanthropic, insidious, cynical, vicious: all the terms apply. The closest thing I can discern to a flaw is that, at this juncture, Rick Wright was no longer involved in the compositional process. Whether he was simply experiencing a personal block or felt stifled by Waters’ domineering is unclear, but either way, it's a loss.
4. Obscured by Clouds
Composed, recorded and released after the Dark Side material was first aired live but before the final studio product was completed, Obscured by Clouds is the album Dark Side should & (almost) could have been. The vibe and basic sound of Obscured by Clouds are very similar to those of its higher-profile successor and there are even some direct re-workings, with Breathe becoming Burning Bridges and Mudmen while Time morphs into Childhood’s End, but here there are no bells or whistles—no guest musicians, no backing vocalists, no endless overdubs. Just four friends at the height of their powers, making great music from the heart.
3. The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
1967’s fledgling Pink Floyd was already a great band, but they were Syd Barrett’s boys through and through—in the presence of the Pied Piper, what can you do but follow? The album’s excellence is primarily Syd’s doing: his fairytale lyrics cloaked in music that’s the very sound of childhood joy, his irrepressible humor (“I’ve got a bike, you can ride it if you like / ...I’d give it to you if I could, but I borrowed it”) and his intrepid comet-path leading past the gates of dawn, out into a land only ever explored adequately by Syd himself, here with the band that was his once and forever.
2. Meddle
As far as I'm aware, Meddle contains the most triumphant recorded instances of both a dog howling the blues (Seamus) and the hunting cries of poison-wasteland death crows (not Seamus), and after all these years, Echoes remains the best song I have ever heard. Its power over me defies approximation by words, but I will confess a long-held suspicion: that on that auspicious, green and submarine day when God first dreamt up rock music, Echoes was exactly what He had in mind. It’s the universe in a drop of clear, clear water, resounding bright & evermore.
1. Wish You Were Here
Wish You Were Here is Floyd at the peak of their post-Syd powers and one of my five favorite albums by anybody. Meddle boasts the group’s best song, but where it comes to the album craft, which was always Pink Floyd’s game, this bleak 1975 behemoth is their magnum opus. The album’s five songs (four?) are heavyweights like few others in the genre. Together they constitute an album in mourning: lighter tones may litter the darkness, but Wish You Were Here's got a broken heart.
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