While we eagerly wait for the next installment of Tad Wert’s wonderful series, Those Awkward Teenage Years, and collectively shake our heads in disgust at the events (or pseudoevents) transpiring in Washington, DC, I’ve been thinking a lot about Pink Floyd.  As most of you probably know, the band released its immense (and immensely expensive) boxset, The Later Years.  Its coming and its arrival have, for a variety of reasons, sparked my imagination and stirred my soul.  I’ve loved Pink Floyd since roughly 1979, and the band has inspired me personally in a variety of ways, most of them indescribably affecting me in ways I could never measure.  From the unrelenting anger of “Another Brick” to the genteel heights of “High Hopes,” Pink Floyd has been a constant in my life, intellectually and emotionally.

The last actual Pink Floyd album, The Endless River, came out five years ago. There were, of course, the usual complaints and criticisms.  So be it.  Whatever the complaints and criticisms, I must disagree.  The Endless River is not just a great Pink Floyd album, it’s one of the best rock albums of the last decade. In very large part, this excellence comes from intent—it is rather intentionally an homage to one of rock’s greatest and most innovative keyboardists, Rick Wright.

Musically, it is innovative, and the music breathes, lingering where it needs to linger and moving when it needs to move.  If you’ve not listened to it in a while, give it another spin.  It’s well worth many, many spins.

Believe me, it will be far healthier than dwelling on politics.  And, it will probably be more productive, too.