I can’t believe this hasn’t been done, but I’ve gone through six search pages…
What’s your favourite Floyd album?
With no hesitation, I go for A Saucerful Of Secrets: perfectly sad psychedelia, the end of Syd (Jugband Blues- what a way to go), the best Floyd song in Set The Controls, the adventurous title track, and overall, not a duff moment.
But I also rate Animals and A Momentary Lapse Of Reason. One they never released - and should have is The Man & The Journey. It would have taken the place of Umma Gumma and More while disposing of worst tracks from them.
I think that Dark Side is the most boring album in the Floyd’s canon. It’s just too ordinary. I can still remember the sense of disappintment when I first heard it. Fortunately, it turned out to be a momentary blip. Well, apart from The Final Cut, which is very boring. But its excuse is that it’s not actually a true Floyd album but a Waters solo album.
Atom Heart Mother, for the title song as well as “Summer of '68” and “If.”
I bought Dark Side the week it came out. It struck me was watered down Pink Floyd, OK, but not what made Floyd great. Meddle and Ummagumma were far superior, too.
More is a soundtrack to a film that involves drug taking and nudity on Ibiza by a director called Barbet Schroeder. It includes some of the Floyds finest early songs: Cirrus Minor, Green Is The Colour and Cymbaline. While a lot of it is filler, the best is very good.
I think the soundtrack for the other Schroeder/Floyd movie, La vallée (Obscured By Clouds) is a better effort, both musically and cinematically speaking.
Floyd has gone through so many different musical phases, that it becomes apples vs. oranges vs. pears to try to select a “best” album. They were all chasing different types of goals.
That said, I went with *Wish You Were Here *as the most fully realized and chock full of awesomeness. Certainly not because it was the first one I ever bought…TRM
Apples and Oranges = early single
A Nice Pair = twofer of Piper and Saucerful (it has a nice pair/pear on the cover). Also a nip in the air, a fork in the road etc.
Haha.
I’m sorry: I know it’s pathetic. I just couldn’t resist it.
I think that’s what makes it easy to narrow down. Some prefer Syd’s Floyd; some prefer Roger’s Floyd, and some prefer David’s Floyd. I prefer the stuff they did post-Syd and pre-DSOTM, when they were Floyd’s Floyd–a real band with no one dominant personality. It’s criminal that there is no officially released live recording from their circa 1970 space-music peak.
My favorite is a toss-up between Ummagumma and Atom Heart Mother, I went with the former this time, but might have changed my vote if I could. Relics should be on the list as well–even though it repeats a couple of tracks from other albums, it fits in nicely with the late-'60s/early-'70s Floyd vibe.
You speak the truth. As I said in my OP, The Man & The Journey is the best example of this. It was recorded for Dutch radio, and is readily available as a bootleg.
I’m surprised at the lack of love for The Wall here. DSOTM and WYWH are albums that I can only take in small doses anymore; perhaps I was overexposed to them in college. The Wall, on the other hand, is one of those classic works that goes so many places and does so many different things that it never ceases to challenge me.
*Meddle *seems neglected as well, though like DSOTM and WYWH it does seem a bit cliched anymore. The problem is perhaps less exaggerated because I hear it so much less.
I’m a Wall officianado myself. That album really informed my pre-teen and teenage years, and as such will always have a special place. I’d put Animals and Wish You Were Here right below that - that was a pretty incredible 5-6 year span they had.
The Wall is hands down my favorite too, although I voted for DSOTM because as someone else alluded to, its still within the realm of being a “band effort” as opposed to the decayed corspe that the Floyd was becoming during The Wall sessions.
DSOTM is probably one of the most atmospheric and interesting rock albums I’ve ever listened to, although I pretty much sum up the penultimate Floyd period as DSOTM-Wish You Were Here-Animals-The Wall. I love them all.
And I simply just cannot get into practically ANY of the Syd Barret stuff. I think its completely horrible.
As I’ve said before, most of the tracks in The Wall by themselves have more musical power than nearly all albums by 99% of other groups, and there are at least 14 of these musical nuggets in the album (discounting the ones that are only superb rather than amongst the best tracks ever recorded.)
That said there are 10 other excellent albums worth of stuff on that list too (this is the first time I’ve heard of combining the good parts of More and Ummagumma, and if you combined the best parts of DSOT and the Division Bell, and ASoS and AHM, you’d have excellent albums, too.) Plus an excellent album’s worth of singles.
