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To put it real simply, Pink Floyd were having major issues in the mid-'80s. Roger Waters pretty much wanted Pink Floyd to himself, as 1983's "The Final Cut" shows. Seemingly fed up with Floyd, and with a reservoir of unused compositions built up, David Gilmour brought back Bob Ezrin as co-producer, recruited a whole bunch of extremely talented players (Pino Palladino, Jeff Porcaro, and Steve Winwood, to name a few), and went about making his second solo album, "About Face", originally released in March of 1984.
"About Face" is an interesting title for the album. It could be taken as a sly jab of sorts at Waters. It could also be applied somewhat to the music... Granted, you really can't expect to completely take the Floyd out of Gilmour's sound, but it's not like fans would desire that of him anyway. However, the album finds Gilmour in control and doing things his way--Pete Townshend wrote the lyrics for two of the songs ("Love On The Air" & "All Lovers Are Deranged"), but otherwise, Gilmour wrote all of the tracks on the album himself--and David does have quite a few surprises up his sleeve here.
One thing that's pretty revelatory is to discover that Gilmour could deliver such an incredibly funky, uptempo pop-rocker with "Blue Light". Using his patented guitar echo, Gilmour bases this song around a mind-blowingly infectious guitar riff, and the song is an absolute blast, with additional thanks to the punchy horn arrangement. Also notice his very humourous, albeit slightly self-righteous spoken voiceover toward the end of the song. Granted, you could argue that precedence was set by some of the stuff on "The Wall", but still, it's pretty hard to imagine hearing something like "Blue Light" cropping up on a Pink Floyd record.
Another striking element is that on a couple tracks, Gilmour sounds uncannily like Leonard Cohen, both in terms of the guitar-style and with the stately lead vocals. There's "Cruise", which is breezy and splendidly tuneful; and "Near The End", which is a hauntingly beautiful album-closing ballad, with acoustic guitar soloing neatly giving way to a soaring electric toward the end.
And there's more great stuff. The album-opening harmony-fest "Until We Sleep" is surprisingly reminiscent of psychedelic-era Beatles--a very catchy song that grooves along irresistibly. The roaring "All Lovers Are Deranged" is a brilliant, cathartic mid-tempo rocker with gloriously from-the-gut vocals from David on the chorus. "Murder" is an explosive 'power ballad' of sorts that starts off in Dylan-esque acoustic mode and features sumptuously melodic fretless bass guitar work. The contemplative orchestrated ballad "You Know I'm Right" is also excellent, with a rhythmically deceptive first verse, and a simple arpegiatted guitar part that recalls "Raise My Rent" from David's first solo album.
Others have complained about Gilmour's lyrics, saying things like "he's no Roger Waters" or that "writing lyrics isn't his forte". Granted, he didn't exactly make "About Face" an elaborate concept album, but regardless of this, his lyrics here are uniformly excellent--poetic and eloquently-written--and his precise renderings make the most of them.
One minor gripe is that Gilmour does have a bit of a tendency to get carried away with his wailing, effect-laden electric guitar work. Don't get me wrong, I realize it's a trademark of his, and on songs like "All Lovers Are Deranged", it simply rocks. Sometimes though, it does feels out of place in the context of the particular track--the most glaring example of this is on the instrumental "Let's Get Metaphysical" which has Gilmour wailing away backed by a full orchestra, and in this case, it's just not an appealing combination.
Overall though, this album is an excellent "About Face" for David Gilmour, and I think it's worth a try even if you're NOT a huge Pink Floyd fan. "About Face" is a must-have album for any serious listener.
(P.S. Listening to this CD version of the album, I notice a surprising amount of 'drop outs' on several of the songs which can be somewhat distracting, and it makes me wonder about the source that was used for this CD transfer. That said, this album could really use a nice remastering job.)
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- Ms Stephanie Frances Enid Layne.Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 14, 2024
About Face, by David Gilmour, the Pink Floyd legend.
