The last album David Gilmour was obsessed with: “Just brilliant”
Due to his work with Pink Floyd and as a solo artist, David Gilmour is associated with the highest level of accomplishment. Sure, he might have released his share of duds with his old band, but due to the resplendence of the likes of The Dark Side of the Moon, Gilmour is rightly deemed one of the finest to ever do it.
Given that records such as 1973’s The Dark Side of the Moon brought a truly cerebral and philosophically robust edge to music – a perfect foil to the innovative scope of the instrumentation – Gilmour took up a place at the table with the likes of John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix. These figures were inspirational for him when forming his sound and have also done their bit in changing music’s trajectory.
While he is still making music today, with his latest solo effort, 2024’s Luck and Strange, regarded as one of the finest efforts of his career due to him bravely refusing to make a replica of 2015’s Rattle That Lock, and working with Alt-J producer Charlie Andrew, Gilmour is still associated with the music of the classic rock era.
However, as working with Andrew demonstrates, Gilmour is an artist who has constantly worked to move forward with the times and not be left behind like so many of his generation. Of course, he still loves the musicians who inspired him when he was young, but he keeps his finger on the pulse. Having his eyes open to current musical developments has been the foundation of remaining so relevant. It could not be more different for his old bandmate, Roger Waters.
Like every great artist, Gilmour shifts his sound and tinkers with his formula depending on the zeitgeist. For this reason, it’s no surprise that Luck and Strange is so excellent. It masterfully takes his sound into new areas, offering refreshing angles, and once again confirms that his work still has real value.
Although Gilmour has openly stated that he didn’t know who Andrew was before working with him, and in turn, the producer admitted that he hadn’t heard much of his work, over the past few years, Gilmour has outlined just how up-to-date he is with music’s state of play on several occasions. He even once admitted that he was too old for Arctic Monkeys when they broke out but noted he would have loved them if he was in his 20s.
Another wildly accomplished, more contemporary act that Gilmour’s a big fan of is Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. As you might imagine, Gilmour likes modern music of a specific nature, so there’s no real surprise that the last album he was truly obsessed with was Cave’s 2013 effort, Push the Sky Away.
At the time, he said in an interview: “I’ve just been so busy for so long now that I can’t remember what I was last listening to… The last album that I listened to the whole album and got a bit obsessed by it, and really enjoyed putting on, and listening to the whole thing the whole way through, was Nick Cave’s last album called Push the Sky Away. Just brilliant.”
While Push the Sky Away gets overlooked in favour of Ghosteen, it is one of the most engrossing bodies of work in Cave and the Bad Seeds’ oeuvre. It also has many curious and surreal components, so it’s easy to see how Gilmour would love it.
