If you take out the last “album side” (i.e. everything past CN,) every track is better than most other bands entire repertiores. If you add up all of the classic guitar soloes from songs even leaving out abitw2 and cn, you still get musical genius better than most classic rock bands’ entire catalogs (and once you add them back in, it’s no contest). Even the seemingly throwaway songs on the first three sides have killer soloes that would seem wankerish or superfluous if they weren’t so excellent.
In short, their other albums are excellent*. The Wall is the best musical creation ever.
A distant second as far as mainstream-era goes is Obscured by Clouds and The Final Cut, but there’s something to be said for Syd-era as well.
*Okay, you can only get 2 albums worth of excellent material from the best of Ummagumma, TDB, and AHM, but considering they have an excellent album’s worth of singles, it balances out
Anecdote warning - When I was growing up in the '70s, I made the conscious choice not to own any Pink Floyd. Not because I didn’t like them - I loved them. But my friends and I all had very similar tastes in music, and I wanted to have at least one group that I wasn’t familiar with to listen to at other people’s houses. I had already over-played my own collection of Yes, ELP, King Crimson, Jethro Tull, Strawbs, Gentle Giant, Genesis, etc… - I wanted to be able to listen to stuff that I liked that but that I didn’t know all that well.
It totally backfired - it just meant that after a couple of years, I had this reputation among all my friends as a total Pink Floyd head. Behind my back, they all conspired to make sure I never got to pick the next album any time I visited.
In all seriousness, I prefer albums which are heavy on Roger’s lyrics, so I’m going to have to add a vote for The Final Cut. Although I don’t listen to Floyd as much as I used to, this album gets the most play when I do.
A long time ago, a friend of mine “explained” the album to me. We were a little, shall we say, under the influence, and it has always stuck with me. I wish I knew what happened to him. We drifted apart…
How I wish,
how I wish you were here
We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl
year after year…
Running over the same old ground.
What have we found?
The same old fears.
Wish you were here.
This spoke/speaks to me about some very very close friends way long ago. In fact, it still speaks to me about them, and we are still the best of friends. I saw one of these folks recently after we had not seen each other for about 15 years. It was like stepping into a time machine. We started our friendship again like we had left it in mid sentence and continued the conversation. Just had a 15 year break.
I will put more votes down for Animals and Meddle though.
Animals was my first, but Wish You Were Here is my favorite. I think “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” is probably the best thing Pink Floyd ever did. I love how the first sections build up, both musically and emotionally; how Gilmour’s guitar playing goes from subdued to increasingly anguished (while his tone shifts from clean to distorted); “Syd’s theme”; Waters’ vocal; and the beautiful lyrics. I also think Gilmour’s pedal steel playing in the second half is some of the most intense stuff he ever put down, yet it’s almost never cited among his best playing.
Animals, Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall, and Final Cut. That’s around the time when they took what they learned from their earlier audio experimenting and actually applied it to good music. Before that era were too many failed experiments, after that was just soullessly repeating what they had already done.
