David Gilmour - Rattle That Lock

David Gilmour is releasing his first solo record since On An Island in 2006.  Rattle That Lock is scheduled to be released on September 18th.  First single will premier later this week.  

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I wasn't crazy about On an Island (wasn't bad, just a little too sleepy for me), but I'll definitely head out and pick up a copy of this to see what's what. Gilmour deserves at least THAT much respect from me, even if I'm not going to go in expecting a classic.

Awesome. On an Island was amazing to me. Looking forward to this.

Runicen wrote:

I wasn't crazy about On an Island (wasn't bad, just a little too sleepy for me)

That was my take on it as well. I wonder if it was because it was an attempt to do something that sounded distinctly different from Pink Floyd, and going for a sleepier/more laid-back vibe was one way of doing that.

I took it more at face value (as opposed to an "About Face" har har har) and assumed that he was just living a tranquil, domestic life and the music reflected that fact.

It was musically accomplished and quite lovely, but it (to me) was a very "what you see is what you get" album. If you want mellow and beautiful, great. I tend to prefer my tranquil albums with a bit more depth to them and this just didn't check the right boxes.

At some point, being completist swine, I'll pick up OaI again for the shelf, but I don't know if it'll ever be a heavy rotation album.

Honestly, much as I'm sure S.D. will groan about this one, my favorite Gilmour solo album is probably About Face simply because it is such a varied and different sounding album. It's not Floyd and it doesn't quite sound like anybody else. Even the dreaded "hit single," Blue Light, is a pretty weird mix of sounds. I dig it.

I'm not expecting him to make that album again (very much a product of the 80s as it was), but I'd like to see some more variety from him and hope the new album hits a few more of those markers.

First single:



I like it, tasty little funky yet urbane groove, nice lead vocal from Gilmour with some grit which juxtaposes against the smoothness of the arrangement. And not surprisingly, the guitar sound is excellent.

Wow... Yeah, this just got upgraded to a "must buy." This sounds like an older Gilmour branching out and trying some different stuff.

Also really cool to hear him doing some vocal stretching. Yeah, I can hear some limitations in the voice, but it's nice to hear him PUSHING for those boundaries.

Strangely, this really makes me want to hear A Momentary Lapse of Reason for whatever reason...

Two thumbs up from me.

Mildly reminiscent of Mark Knopfler's more recent stuff - it sounds like him, but he's branching out within the sound, if that makes any sense.

Damn that is a cool arrangement. Catchy too.

Cool. While not frequent players for me, I've enjoyed the 3 solo Gilmour albums I have. I'm sure this one will be no different.

Another new track from Rattle That Lock.

Not bad. I have a subscription to Classic Rock magazine and this month's cover story is a celebration of 50 years of Pink Floyd. Half the mag is devoted to them, and even though I am an intermediate fan at best (own about half the catalog and know all the "hits" from the radio) it's a truly great read. I think it's cool that he recorded some of this on his recording studio houseboat, "the Astoria." Since you and Runicen are pretty big Floyd fans, I have to ask, what really went down with Gilmour and Waters? The articles I have read in CR mag don't really get into other than the standard line of "creative differences" but I have a snaking suspicion that's not the real story. Thanks.

I have Nick Mason's book, but haven't read it yet. Waters claims some of it isn't accurate anyway, but chalked it up to differences in recollection, so clearly he's mellowed with time.

Just starting off with that because I can throw out what my impression of their split is, but I doubt it's "what really went down."

Everything kicked off with the success of Dark Side of the Moon. Waters saw success and wanted to keep going. The other members of the band were kind of burnt out and felt they'd accomplished what they set out to do. So, by most accounts, Wish You Were Here was an exercise in pulling teeth just to get everyone in the studio to work on his end, but it was still a "band" effort.

When you get to Animals, most of the music was written by Waters and all of the lyrics were as well. He was also beginning to have major issues with the size of the venues they were playing, having come from playing in clubs and theaters to attentive audiences and gotten to sports arenas where the screaming audience never quieted down, people were drunk and disorderly and fireworks were being set off pretty regularly. This culminated in the Animals tour with him spitting in the face of a fan who was climbing up the side of the stage barricade and sparked the idea for The Wall (the original concept was him throwing grenades into an arena audience and the audience continuing to cheer even when their arms and legs were getting blown off).

Around this time, and I forget the specifics about this, there was a major financial foul up in the band's affairs and all four of them ended up broke due to some dirty dealing. At this point, Waters had demoed up The Wall and basically was the only person who could fix things for the band by delivering another hit. He hit the end of his patience with keyboardist Rick Wright (who by all accounts was in a pretty badass cocaine addiction at this point) and pulled a "Fire him or I'm releasing this as a solo album and you're boned" move. This is pretty well the definitive movement that Pink Floyd became "his" band.

So, Wright was retained as a session player for the album and tour of The Wall (incidentally, he's the only one who made money on that tour because the corporation lost money due to the scope of the stage show and how few times it was actually played) and then he was out.

The last Waters album was The Final Cut, which started as leftover songs from The Wall, stuff used in the movie, etc. and got a mind of its own because the Falklands war really pissed off Waters. Gilmour wasn't into the idea and was treated as a session player, to the point that his conventional co-producer credit was requested removed from the album (by Gilmour himself). At the end of this, Waters declared Pink Floyd "creative bankrupt" and left the band, considering that it was done and over with.

Fast forward a few years and Gilmour and Nick Mason (drummer) decide to get back together to do the Floyd thing. Waters attempts to sue them so they can't and fails.

So, that's kind of the Cliff's Notes of the events. The bottom line was that Waters was the driven one but his drive pushed him into imposing his will over the band itself. When he walked, he assumed they'd leave the name alone and he'd be free to continue as "the genius of Pink Floyd," but audiences weren't having what he was offering solo (most didn't really know who he was in all likelihood) and then "the other guys" resurrected the name and were infinitely more successful. That's about the sum total of the conflict.

At this point, Waters is pretty well on record saying his thinking was a mistake and that he shouldn't have tried to prevent them from doing what they did, which is probably why they seem to be on ok terms.

S.D. can let me know if I left out anything important, but I think that's the majority of the important stuff.

For the record, my attitude towards the split is that Waters was always the more interesting writer/conceptual guy, but Gilmour was needed to actually make those lyrics and concepts MUSICAL, which is where Waters on his own kind of fails. However, on the flip, Gilmour without Waters is kind of pretty and insubstantial, so their partnership is very much one of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.

Runicen wrote:

At this point, Waters is pretty well on record saying his thinking was a mistake and that he shouldn't have tried to prevent them from doing what they did, which is probably why they seem to be on ok terms.

I think it's entirely possible that he also got some bad legal advice. It's entirely understandable that Waters just wanted to make sure that he wasn't going to get shafted when Gilmour resurrected Pink Floyd, as after all they were going to be performing songs that he wrote. So it's entirely possible that things got a bit out of hand when the lawyers got involved as maybe they encouraged him to go a bit further than he might otherwise have done.

And I don't know how true this is, but apparently there were some issues when Waters wanted to release his In the Flesh live album, which contained some Floyd songs. He released the album, so they obviously got resolved, but if it's true then at one point it was the case that the only person in the world not allowed to record those songs was the guy who actually wrote them.

Quote :

For the record, my attitude towards the split is that Waters was always the more interesting writer/conceptual guy, but Gilmour was needed to actually make those lyrics and concepts MUSICAL, which is where Waters on his own kind of fails.  However, on the flip, Gilmour without Waters is kind of pretty and insubstantial, so their partnership is very much one of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.

Dogs is primarily a David Gilmour composition, Waters wrote the lyrics but most of the music came from Gilmour.  I have also read an interview with one of engineers involved in the Animals recording that Gilmour wrote the coda to "Sheep" but was not given a songwriting credit.  

Waters is a great lyricist and conceptualist but he's not a great singer and he's a workmanlike musician.  He needs collaborators.

And Waters is so full of shit. He states that Floyd is "creatively spent" yet he was the only writer at that point (because he wouldn't let anyone else in the band contribute anything) so he's just admitting that HE was out of material. Then he releases that turd The Pros And Cons Of Hitch-Hiking and PROVES without a shadow of a doubt that he NEEDED Gilmour and Wright to be artistically successful.

And for the record David Gilmour has songwriting credit on 3 of the most popular tracks from The Wall;  Young Lust, Comfortably Numb and Run Like Hell.  and pretty much all of the "hits" on that album feature David on lead vocals.

In the US I think if you asked people what the defining characteristic of Pink Floyd was you'd have a lot of people mention Gilmour's voice and Gilmour's guitar playing.

Citanul wrote:

I think it's entirely possible that he also got some bad legal advice.  It's entirely understandable that Waters just wanted to make sure that he wasn't going to get shafted when Gilmour resurrected Pink Floyd, as after all they were going to be performing songs that he wrote.  So it's entirely possible that things got a bit out of hand when the lawyers got involved as maybe they encouraged him to go a bit further than he might otherwise have done.

And I don't know how true this is, but apparently there were some issues when Waters wanted to release his In the Flesh live album, which contained some Floyd songs.  He released the album, so they obviously got resolved, but if it's true then at one point it was the case that the only person in the world not allowed to record those songs was the guy who actually wrote them.

Again, this is strictly my recollection of interviews and the like, but I always got the impression Waters was trying to thunder ahead and his lawyers were trying to tell him, "Dude, you don't have a case - you don't even have something that resembles a case."

It boiled down to the Pink Floyd business partnership never folding. All three of the remaining members (remember, Rick Wright was out by this point) would have needed to vote to retire the name and that never happened. Roger was trying to bank on the "I wrote all the important stuff," card to trump that and it's not a valid legal argument, so it didn't end up flying.

That said, his concerns were valid because his Radio K.A.O.S. tour tanked because Pink Floyd was touring at the same time. He was losing money playing theaters and they were selling out arenas. Shame too because that touring concept was cool as hell from the bootlegs I've heard.

S.D. wrote:

In the US I think if you asked people what the defining characteristic of Pink Floyd was you'd have a lot of people mention Gilmour's voice and Gilmour's guitar playing.

I'd agree with you, but I think that underplays how important strong material is as well. There's a reason Gilmour on his own was never as successful as Pink Floyd in the mid-80s (hence resurrecting the name with Mason) and I think it lies completely in the material. I enjoy Gilmour's solo stuff, but it's just nowhere near the levels of the Floyd or Waters in staying power for me. It's fluff. Awesome fluff, but still fluff.

I also think it's a little dim a view to take of Waters to say he was the one who was tapped out when he tried to fold the Floyd tent. Pros & Cons was not a strong ALBUM, but it had great emotional moments (the title track, for one) and kind of proves the point that he needed collaborators in order to dress up his concepts to make them more universally appealing (i.e. for people not as willing to work on difficult albums as I was when I heard it). The only REAL misstep I think he made as a solo artist was Radio K.A.O.S. and the real mistake was trying to pin those songs into a concept album. The concept is absurd, but the execution is interesting. Scrapping the story and just having an album of songs would have probably been the better move. Sadly, Waters has gone full baby/bathwater on that one and says the whole album was a waste. Again, there are moments on that album that genuinely move me and the tour he staged for it with the faux radio studio on stage and the "calls from the hall" was wild as hell.

He wasn't spent as a creative force, but his ambitions needed to be tempered by someone else and that's where he really fell on his face.

S.D. wrote:

Sorry, but I refuse to use the word "fluff" to describe Gilmour's solo albums.  I have too much respect for him as a musician to do so.  

No need to go further with this.  You are in the Waters camp, I'm in the Gilmour camp and my opinion has held steady on this issue for the past 30 years and it will not be changing.  

I respect the hell out of Gilmour's musicianship. I just don't think as much of him as a writer. Even using the term "fluff" for his solo stuff is a term of endearment, just a very specific one. It's the musical equivalent of the woman who is great in bed, but who can't carry on a conversation to save her life. Waters, on the other hand, puts out music the equivalent of a woman you can think about in platonic terms only, but who challenges the hell out of your mind.

All that weird metaphor to get to the point that it's all good. I own and listen to both catalogs and, while I think both are the better for involving the other, we're getting good but different material from both camps. Nothing to choose sides over here.

Back to the David Gilmour album this thread was created for...

Been quite enjoying listening to Rattle That Lock over the weekend. I think people that enjoyed Gilmour's other solo albums will probably like it, those who didn't aren't going to find anything here to change their mind.

It's not a concept album and doesn't set out to make a grand statement, it's simply a collection of standalone songs and instrumentals, all impeccably arranged and performed. Gilmour sounds relaxed and happy and wholly unconcerned with anything other than just playing the music he enjoys playing. It's a mellow album, not as mellow as On An Island but it's not a rocker either.

5 a.m. is one of those lush Gilmour instrumentals with the trademark soaring guitar (I'm not complaining).

Rattle That Lock - The first single, a nice melodic rocker (not that far removed from Steely Dan) that would sound perfect while at the beach with an umbrella drink in your hand.

Faces Of Stone - The track is a little more eerie in tone than you generally get from Gilmour, there's a bit of that "demented carousel" type of 3/4 vibe to it. Striking tune that takes a few plays to fully digest.

A Boat Lies Waiting - This is a tribute to Richard Wright and is primarily a lush harmony vocal part (David + David Crosby and Graham Nash) over a light instrumental backing. It's a very nice track though I believe it would work more effectively sequenced later in the album. This track sounds most like the On An Island material.

Dancing Right In Front Of Me - Really like this tune, another sort-of departure for David with some definite jazz elements to the arrangement.

Side two is a little stronger overall...

In Any Tongue - This track is getting most of the praise, probably because it's the most "Floyd-sounding" on the record. Actually, because it's so Floyd I think that knocks it down a notch or two for me. This song is very much in the On The Turning Away/A Great Day For Freedom camp and sounds like it could have fit on The Division Bell. While I'm not overly excited with the entire track....I gotta say I love the guitar playing, especially in the extended coda.

Beauty - This is the second instrumental from the album and one of the highlights, really nice track.

The Girl In The Yellow Dress - Probably my favorite track and coincidentally also the track that will probably cause the most controversy. It's a straight-ahead small jazz combo track with David crooning overtop...if you ever wondered what Dave would sound like playing in a small Paris bistro then here you go. It's the most different song on the album and one that takes him into an area he's never explored before...but I still think it fits in perfectly with the overall mood of the album itself. I have to admit I've played this track more than anything else on the record so far.

Today - The most uptempo track on the album, a groove based jam that's completely infectious, my only complaint is I wished it went on a little longer...

And Then... is the 3rd instrumental, working as a bookend along with 5a.m. - more lovely Gilmour guitar....

If you expect ground-breaking experimentation then look elsewhere, you aren't going to find it here. If you're looking for an uptempo rocker you're not going t find that either. However, if you enjoy David's voice and guitar playing I think there's a lot to admire on Rattle That Lock.

Everything you've had to say about this album definitely makes me want to hear it. I'm holding out for the version with the Blu-ray to drop in price first.

When it comes to DG's solo catalog, About Face is probably the most "interesting" to me. The collabs with Pete Townshend, the genre exercises, etc. really make it something I can come back to because it does something none of the other Floyd or Floyd-related albums do. It's not competing with something else from the catalog. From the above, it sounds like the new one may not push quite so many boundaries, but it's still a relative breath of fresh air. I suspect I will like this one because my biggest complaints regarding his self-titled solo debut and On an Island were that they came across very monolithic and samey on a musical level. In both of those albums though, I'd be totally willing to accept that it was production choices that led to that feeling - particularly on the first album, which is only really redeemed by "There's No Way Out of Here."

I don't understand the dislike for his debut solo album, there's a lot more good material on that album than just There's No Way Out Of Here. It's my favorite of his solo releases and I also like it better than anything Pink Floyd released post-1980.

Overall I would take Gilmour's solo albums over his Pink Floyd related releases (Momentary or Division).

The solo debut has good moments and, in the right mood, I'll reach for it, but it has this very muddy, sort of sepia toned feel to it. It's strictly subjective, but I don't care for the vibe and "There's No Way..." is the only song I tend to reach for on its own.

Funny enough, I liked it a lot more as a teen because it was the most "Floydian" solo album Gilmour had out at that point and loathed About Face as this bizarre WTF experiment that didn't work. My view has pretty well reversed where now I see About Face as a lot more adventurous and interesting and the self-titled as too conservative.

You know, in talking over the Gilmour catalog, I wonder how much my opinion would change if someone gave the first album a serious sonic scrub-down and remixed it to give it a little more sparkle than it presently has. Hell, maybe I'll even try to hunt down a used vinyl copy and see if hearing it that way gives it some extra life for me.

It was remastered back in like 2007 or so, I think that's the version I currently have, I've never been bothered by the production sound on that album. It's dry and stripped-down compared to the usual Floyd production but no glaring problems as far as I'm concerned.

I have more issues with the production sound on his 80s releases.

By comparison, Rick Wright's "Wet Dream" had a lot more high end shimmer and sounded "bigger" to my ears.

Even for all its grim qualities, Animals had more shimmer and beauty to it than the more muted production on Gilmour's self-titled. Again, your mileage may vary, but that's my impression. It just feels like there's a layer of murk on everything and it doesn't flatter the material.

I think my copies of DG's first two albums are the '07 remasters. There's a little more low end emphasis relative to the original CD pressings, but they weren't exactly revelatory.

Hmmmm...just listened to the album again and I think maybe I'm slightly underrating it. I'm liking it more with each listen. This time "A Boat Lies Waiting" made more of an impact (really lovely) and I'm noticing that "In Any Tongue" actually sounds more like "The Final Cut" than The Division Bell. The instrumental outro uses a really piercing guitar tone not unlike what he used on The Fletcher Memorial Home.

If I end up spending a stupid amount of money on the deluxe ed of this album, I'm blaming you, S.D.

In all seriousness, your descriptions of these tracks are waking up my "Must buy all things Floyd (yes, even the Roger Waters opera, which was PRETTY LAME...)" fanboyism in a way I haven't had to deal with since before On an Island came out.