Pink Floyd's 'Bell' rings loud and true

By Nate Seltenrich

David Gilmour, the post-1968 lead guitarist and vocalist of this acclaimed rock band Pink Floyd, shows off some of his best, most stirring, most inimitable stuff on "The Division Bell." Although this album is often overlooked and even shunned by critics, I find it to be one of Pink Floyd's most enjoyable recordings.

"The Division Bell" is a musical masterpiece of majestic proportions, yet it does its work on a very personal level. Gilmour's evocative and emotional solos are as beautiful as a perfect red rose. The music is as sensual as fine silk. "The Division Bell" is as grandiose as a royal palace, as bittersweet as dark chocolate, as sincere as a love poem.

Track four, an instrumental piece entitled "Marooned," is one of the album's standouts. Here, Gilmour's guitar is the lifeblood of the song, running throughout as it tells a story yet offers numerous possibilities for the interpretation of its meaning. "Marooned" even won a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental on an Album in 1994.

Compared to other Pink Floyd albums, "The Division Bell" is predominately slow-tempo. The music is more progressive than experimental, more hypnotic than weird, more introspective than dark. For these reasons, "The Division Bell" has been considered a harkening back to the pre-"Dark Side of the Moon" years. Further contributing to its value, this album thus occupies a unique position in the extensive Pink Floyd catalog.

If you're a Pink Floyd fan and haven't given "The Division Bell" a listen, you're depriving yourself of a very special sonic experience and of familiarity with an important point in Floyd's legendary life. A