Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd
Echoesis a double-CD collection of some of Pink Floyd's best  songs. It's also a fascinating document of the band's history. They began life  asSyd Barrett's  phantasmagoric plaything before clasping the wings of Icarus and ascending  toward the sun on an epic space-rock odyssey, eventually turning left once they  reached the dark side of the moon and burning up on reentry, crash-landing on  every earthlings' home hi-fi. And it's all here--30 years of the Floyd's awesome  back catalog trimmed down to two handsome CDs. It's worth remembering that,  despite a fondness for pyrotechnics, Pink Floyd were never a prog-rock band.  Sure, some of their songs are a bit long, and they never released singles (at  least not for 11 years), but the same could be said forLed Zeppelin. Clinically  devoid of the faux-classical overtures and vainglorious musicianship of that  era, Pink Floyd were a pole apart;Meddle's epic maritime tone poem  "Echoes" remains the Floyd's apogee. But here, on this collection, "the  albatross" which "hangs motionless upon the air" has had its wings clipped--seven full minutes are missing, but you'd never be able to tell. The sonar  bleeps, the screeching seagulls, the howling winds are all retained, and whoever  wielded the editorial axe, Eugene, did so carefully.Interestingly, the album's nonchronological track listing works--the  summery, childhood enchantment of "See Emily Play" is right next to the school  discipline of "Happiest Days of Our Lives"--and at least this way no one will  switch off when material fromA Momentary Lapse of Reasoncomes around.  Despite the curious omission of "Atom Heart Mother," this really is the very  best of the Floyd--from the throbbing "One of These Days" to the pop operatic  "Great Gig in the Sky" to the genius silvery fluidity of Dave Gilmour's guitar  work. This is timeless, as many members ofSigur Rós,Radiohead, and theBeta Bandwill attest.--Kevin Maidment