The Division Bell
AsRoger Waters's solo career set into a sunset of suspiciously self-servingWallrevivals and compelling if modest-selling solo efforts, his former band became one of the few outfits in the soft live market of the 1990s to burnish its stadium-filling appeal. But their recorded output wasn't quite so rosy. As all post-Dark Side of the Moonalbums must have a Big Important Theme,The Division Bellis vaguely about levels of separation (did you say, duh!?), with more than one not-so-opaque lyrical jab at the estranged Waters. But there's a sense that the band may have put more thought into its trademark audio gimmickry (well represented here by the actual sound of the earth's crust cracking--you don't getthatonRage Against the Machinealbums!--and a "spoken" intro by Dr. Stephen Hawking, or rather his voice synthesizer) than it did into its songs this time around. The opening "Cluster One" has a hypnotic minimalist lure that dissolves all too quickly into the bluesy waffle of "What Do You Want From Me," while Floyd Mach III leaderDave Gilmour's usually lyrical guitar work is uninspired throughout, a definite Floydian slip. Still, the band maddeningly manages a few moments of the old grandeur here and there.The Division Bellis not a great Pink Floyd album, but an all-too-fallible simulation.--Jerry McCulley