LUCK AND SKILL

Rock behemoths Pink Floyd cast a long shadow across popular music, from the 60s to the 80s and beyond. Perhaps that is why Floyd guitarist David Gilmour has produced just five studio albums in a six decade career; the band that bought him fame, fortune and friction has tended to dominate his creative life. Luck And Strange is Gilmour’s most recent solo release, appearing in September 2024. To the delight of those who love his work, it is a fine record.

Produced with understated contemporary flair by Charlie Andrew, Luck And Strange features contributions both familiar and familial. Long time Floyd associate Guy Pratt plays bass, legendary drummer Steve Gadd occupies the drum stool, while perhaps most pleasingly Floyd keyboard player Richard Wright appears on the title track via the incorporation of music from a 2007 jam, recorded the year before he died. Daughter Romany takes the lead vocal on a cover of "Between Two Points" by The Montgolfier Brothers and son Charlie gets a lyric co-write credit on one track. Their sibling Gabriel does some backing vocals. Important though the offspring’s contributions are, by far the most significant collaborator is Polly Samson, Gilmour’s spouse. This, of course, is not new. Ms Samson has been the guitarist’s primary lyricist since The Division Bell, Pink Floyd’s 1994 album. Here she continues exploring issues of mortality, hope, and connection, themes embedded in the Floyd universe since the dawn of the band. Gilmour sings her lyrics comfortably, often ardently. If the songs are missing the clenched jaw and caustic observation of estranged band-mate Roger Waters, that may have as much to do with the soothing flow of time as the presence of a feminine perspective. Whatever. Gilmour is in excellent voice as he ruminates on the past and his own inevitable journey.

A brief instrumental piece, "Black Cat", fades in to open the record with a pleasing melodicism; piano and electric guitar letting us know we are in the right place. It is a measured beginning, leading seamlessly into the title track. "Luck and Strange" is the piece incorporating the Rick Wright recordings, though it’s Gilmour’s vocals that grab and hold our attention on this stately triple-time blues. A number of reviews have seized upon the title of the third track, "The Piper’s Call" as some kind of reference to the debut Pink Floyd album. That’s wishful thinking, not least because Gilmour wasn’t even a member of the band in 1967. The song comments on the lure (and dangers) of fame and hedonism;  it is about the truism of "having to pay the piper". Nothing Wind In The Willows* here. 

The next three tracks, comprising the remainder of the first side, are thematically linked. "A Single Spark" references the existential idea that human life is a single, brief speck of light between two eternities of darkness. Gilmour lifts the song with an extended, inspired solo. "Vita Brevis" comes from the Latin translation of an ancient Greek aphorism, ars longa vita brevis.^~ Art lasts, life is brief. There’s that momentary spark again. Then "Between Two Points", the song sung by daughter Romany, lifts us out of the vale of tears this life can sometimes seem. Her vocal is strong yet delicate, the harp and strings superb; it is an album highlight.

The record’s most Pink Floydy song opens side two; "Dark and Velvet Nights" is a rocker with a great Samson lyric and grooving organ… and a guitar solo, of course.

"Sings" may have been conceived during lockdown, but its plea to lock out the world resonates strongly today. The longest cut on the LP is "Scattered", washed with strings and piano and boasting an epic Gilmour guitar showcase—acoustic then electric—that leaves us reflective and uplifted. That a veteran, a titan of rock music, has chosen to put such care and skill into a recording released six months after his seventy-eighth birthday is a gift. That it is perhaps his strongest solo album is inspiring. Vita longa, Mr Gilmour.

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* "Piper At The Gates of Dawn" is a sublime chapter in the classic children’s book The Wind In The Willows by Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908.

^~ Ars Longa Vita Brevis is, in passing, the title of an excellent 1968 LP by The Nice.

© Bruce Jenkins—January 2025