The Division Bell

Pink Floyd's final studio album The Division Bell was released in April of 1994 (a full two full months before I graduated High School).
The Division Bell was the first new studio album for the band since their 1987 comeback A Momentary Lapse of Reason. The band spent four years on the Momentary Lapse project recording and touring (the tour ended in 1990).
The band were inactive for all of 1991 (apart from recording the soundtrack to the auto racing film they produced La Carerra Panamericana) and spent 1992 putting together the Shine On box set. It was during an American radio interview in late 1992 that singer and guitarist David Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason revealed that the band would finally begin work on a new album in 1993. Gilmour and Mason, along with a fully reinstated keyboard player Rick Wright (whom was a sideman on the Momentary Lapse album and tour) recorded The Division Bell throughout 1993 and January of 1994 at David's own houseboat studio The Astoria in London plus Abbey Road and Britannia Row Studios with David co-producing the album with Bob Ezrin.
When I first put this album on after buying it on street date, it reminded me of Wish You Were Here which is my favorite Pink Floyd album. This was the band's first theme album in years with its concept about lack of communication.
The opening "Cluster One" is a superb instrumental and one of their best ever. "What Do You Want From Me" sounds like "Have a Cigar (pt. 2)" and is a great song and David and Rick's music just being as great as ever. The haunting "Poles Apart" starts out being about Syd and his descent into madness while the second verse (Hey You!) addresses the demise of David's relationship with Waters (which would somewhat resolve in 2005) and then ends with Gilmour's own self doubts about where he stands in the grand scheme of Pink Floyd and realizing in the end that his own personal life and love is where he keeps his sanity grounded. The Grammy winning instrumental "Marooned" is a lovely piece of music which is superb and Gilmour's guitar rising and falling like a solitary seagull. "A Great Day For Freedom" talks about the fall of The Berlin Wall and the fall of one's relationships. "Wearing The Inside Out" is Rick's personal aside about his own exile both physically from the band and mentally and featured returning sax player Dick Parry whom last played on Wish You Were Here and was Wright's first lead vocal on a Floyd track since "Time" on Dark Side 21 years earlier.
"Take it Back" is the closest Floyd ever came to a love song. "Coming Back to Life" is David's song to his now wife Polly Samson whom brought him back to happiness after all the traumas with Roger and the demise of his first marriage to Ginger in 1990. Polly was actually proofreader to David's lyrics on The Division Bell and out of kindness gave her credit (even if it was just for either proofreading or one phrase as he wrote the majority of lyrics on his songs alone). "Keep Talking" was the song that got loads of airplay on US FM rock radio when released and sounds like classic Floyd from Dark Side and Wish You Were Here era Floyd and still sounds great today. "Lost For Words" dealt with the demise and failed reconciliation with Waters (they somewhat reconciled in 2005). The closing atmospheric epic (which is now fittingly the final Pink Floyd song as of 2008 after the death of Rick Wright) "High Hopes" was the best Floyd track since "Comfortably Numb" which was lyrically somewhat autobiographical and was also about the things you gained and lost in life. Plus, Gilmour's classical and lap steel guitar work here is hard to put in words.
When the album was released (I bought the CD the day it came out and the aqua blue vinyl and cassette), it was an instant smash hitting #1 in its first week here in the States (and also in the band's native UK) and stayed put for four weeks in the Spring of 1994 whilst the band toured in support of the album and sold close to four million copies in the US alone and many more worldwide.
The Division Bell is a great album and as fate turned out to be the band's final studio album in the wake of longtime manager Steve O'Rourke and keyboard player Rick Wright's passings in 2003 and 2008 respectively and Gilmour having four children with current wife Polly Samson. IMHO, The Division Bell ended the band's career with a bang!
In 2011, the album is re-released in a remastered CD version as part of the Why Pink Floyd? campaign done superbly by James Guthrie and Joel Plante. The album sounds as great as the limited vinyl which came out in 1994. The booklet is also excellent.
Hugely recommended!

There is almost NO difference with the new 2011 Division Bell remaster and the original. With two exact model CD players synced up to the exact same place all the way through and A/B comparing all the way through I could hear NO difference with just speakers. With headphones I could hear only a very tiny difference - they lowered the treble just a half a notch (if that much) - so slightly you have to really pay attention with headphones to hear any difference whatsoever. Just kinda rounded it off ever so slightly. Maybe this sounds a little smoother to Guthrie and Co. The new remaster is just a hair faster. Maybe a tenth of a second - not a big deal. Even though, hitting pause on the faster of the two to sync it back up perfectly, the new remaster would eventually overtake by about a second. That's not a lot actually. This new 2011 remaster is 99.9% exact to the original. Oh well. Money, it's a hit. They just need more I suppose. The people that remaster should have a blog telling what they did chapter and verse that made it sound any better. In their defense somewhat..when you remaster a band's back catalog, some of CDs don't NEED anything done to them much if at all. This is probably the case with this one. But then again not a lot of difference in The Wall and it's last remaster either. Just a treble half notch of difference all the way through in that too. Otherwise it's the same. 5 stars for the Division Bell of course but 4 stars because it's 99.9% the same.

I bought this CD the first day it came out in stores, not realizing that this would be the last Pink Floyd studio album. As much as I would love to see Gilmour and Waters reunite and release another PF album, this is not a bad way to end. "High Hopes" is a great song, comparable to the "classic" Pink Floyd of the 70's, and if that is the last song on the last album, they've left a great legacy behind them.

This is the second album without Roger Waters, and is far superior than the previous effort "A Momentary Lapse of Reason" (although that has some great songs too). Every song on this one (with the exception of maybe Rick Wright's "Wearing the Inside Out") is great. From the somber, bluesy "Shine On" style instrumental of "Cluster One", to the Roger inspired acoustic ballad "Lost for Words" to the Grammy winning instrumental masterpiece "Marooned", this is classic Floyd.

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