Loss is a strange shadow. It finds you at the most unexpected time, engulfing you in its shadow and gloom, consuming your thoughts with memories or desires or wonderings of what could have been. Loss lingers with you, contorting into many shapes: loss of faith, loss of a loved one, loss of innocence. It haunts you until you confront it and even then it never truly leaves. A lingering phantom, its quiet hands guide you forward in life, shaping what you are, distorting your perspective of what you could have been.
I start with all of this because, at its core, “Wish You Were Here” is an album saturated with loss. It can be found within the blues riffs woven into each song, and within the soulful singing of both Roger Waters and David Gilmore. It can be found in the lyrics that very much revolve around feelings of isolation, the absence of a friend, and the disillusionment that comes from the vulture-like tendencies of our capitalistic society. To understand this album is to see the world with more jaded eyes, away from the multi-colored spectrum of the rainbow.
I won’t waste too much time waxing poetically about Syd Barrett. If you aren’t deep into the Pink Floyd lore then chances are good you haven’t encountered the name of their previous guitarist, or heard of his eventual mental health decline after (or resulting in) the abuse of LSD. What you do need to know is that after seven years and the release of “Dark Side of the Moon”, he wandered into the studio where Pink Floyd was struggling to begin their next album, and shook the group to the core. To see an old friend so lost, distorted, and vacant crushed the group, and the result of that earth shattering event is the album we have in front of us. It is an album that only a group that is tired and disillusioned could make. If “Dark Side of the Moon” is the album that sent them shooting on a rocket into the cosmos, “Wish You Were Here” is the return to Earth, the realization that everything has changed since you left, and that the world is a little colder in the time you lost out in the stratosphere.
While both it and its predecessor are obviously Floyd albums, there is something that feels stripped back about this album. With the exception of the chorus on “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”, this album almost feels like an acoustic outing. The arrangements feel simpler, sharper, colder. There’s a lot of breathing room on this album, despite the fact that it is only two minutes longer than its warmer, more accessible older sibling. There’s seemingly more improvisation, less clear direction, especially when it comes to the albums bookends, which account for over half the album’s run time (something that would be expanded on even further on their next album “Animals”). And while there were many uplifting moments on “Dark Side…”, almost every song on this album, including the two singles (“Have a Cigar” and “Wish You Were Here”) were still incredibly bitter, cynical songs lacking any of the warmth from their previous effort. This is not the album you smoke a joint to and float off into the stratosphere while listening to. This is the one you listen to alone, on a cold winter’s night, with a scotch and a dark room.
None of these are criticisms mind you, merely observations and comparisons to help one navigate their thoughts on the album, and to bridge my thoughts between the context of the album and how I feel about “Wish You Were Here”. Whenever one of the great bands of our time comes up, the inevitable conversation of “which album is their best?” occurs. Many will point towards “Dark Side…” and with good reason. It’s experimental but still grounded in blues, funk, and rock. Some will push towards “Animals” with its elongated, improvisational passages and its scathing political commentary and concept. Others may look backwards into their more psychedelic, free-spirited Syd Barrett years instead of the indulgent, heady music they would produce after his departure. If you ask me, my vote goes to either this or their last “real” album: “The Wall”. In many ways, this album feels like a prequel to that one. It feels like one of their darker releases, and I enjoy that the album is very much a response to their almost over-night propulsion into rock stardom. I’m drawn to their darker, more melancholy material (I’m sensing a theme here, even as I write this) and tracks like “Welcome to the Machine” and “Wish You Were Here” speak to me now even more than they did as an angsty teenager. So if there was a Floyd album I had to recommend to someone who had never listened to the band I would recommend “Dark Side…”. But if someone came to me feeling lost, or feeling loss, I would point them in this direction. Because maybe they’d see that the thing they were looking for was never really gone, but still here.
My Rating: 5/5
The Word and The Song 