#60
March 27 1984
David Gilmour
About Face
4.25 out of 5
Highlights:
Love On the Air
Blue Light
Cruise
I hated Gilmour’s solo debut. Terrible. Unmemorable. So, I was not looking forward to this.
From the opening strains of “Until We Sleep” I feel like we are in for something a bit different and I start to love “Murder” until it gets unnecessarily weird with it’s muted Pino Paladino bass solo. The ship rights itself just in time and gets me back to familiar Floyd territory. The excellent “Love on the Air” fills me with mixed emotions inasmuch as the lyrics are by Pete Townshend (who also wrote the words for “All Lovers are Deranged”) and they are the most accessible on this album. While the musicianship almost carries the day, the flatline 80’s cocaine fueled production almost drags the whole thing down, but I can overlook that as long as there’s tasty non-Floydian energy like that found on “Blue Light” and “All Lovers Are Deranged”. Roger would never have let these sorts of things get in the way of his plodding 4/4 mid-tempo musings.
And the epic, elegiac instrumental “Let’s Get Metaphysical” makes me happier than almost anything Marillion has ever put my ears through.
Honestly, this gets another .25 if the production didn’t suck. I expect better mixing and mastering from an old studio hat like Gilomour.
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