DAVID GILMOUR - 'Rattle That Lock' (2015)

Less than an year ago we reviewed the final Pink Floyd chapter – ‘The Endless River’, dubbing it a rather pleasant release. There was, however, one notable flaw – Gilmour and Polly Samson’s “Louder Than Words” – a song completely out of place among the otherwise completely instrumental pieces. Now we’re even more certain that the song should have been left out of the PF discography and included in Gilmour’s fourth solo effort instead – which, despite its moments, we find rather disappointing.

Legendary British musician’s previous album – ‘On an Island’ came out almost a decade ago and was by no means applauded by music critics, most of them ruling it a mediocre affair. These days, however, we come to understand ‘On an Island’ was much better than ‘Rattle That Lock’.

Gilmour’s characteristic bluesy guitar style is still the most pleasing thing here – and we could really, really listen to him playing one them after the other for hours and hours. And maybe that’s the reason we go back to the album’s instrumental pieces (three of those – “5 A.M.”, “Beauty” и “And Then…”) again and again. Still, they play little part in the album and cannot really influence our opinion.

That doesn’t come to say Gilmour’s voice is no longer a thing to behold – he still possesses excellent vocal abilities and a soft, soothing voice that fits the slow, almost flegmatic music perfectly. The major problem with this album is that’s it’s a collection of nice, masterfully executed and recorded tracks but little more than that. A music fir for the background and tracks that are easily forget after a listen or two.

The strongly blues oriented tracks do carry their moments of brilliance and yet these bright bits of music never come together as a single outstanding track. For example, despite its length (of over 5 minutes) “Faces of Stone” leaves little more than a neat aftertaste while the jazzy pop of “The Girl in the Yellow Dress” brings the much needed variety to the album but is on its own, a rather standard if pleasant piece of music. “In Any Tongue”, “Today” and lead single “Rattle That Lock” might have been thought of as the album’s highlights but fail to be such, both musically and lyrically.

The good thing about ‘Rattle That Lock’ is that it comes out as a natural, honest album that doesn’t strife to be overtly ambitious or grand. Still, it would hardly make it to our Top 10 of the year.

DAVID GILMOUR – ‘Rattle That Lock’ (2015)