It's a landmark album, not only musically but also stylistically with an album art that's on par with Andy Warhol's famed yellow "It peels off!"-banana that graced Velvet Underground's debut album. The light reflecting prism on top of the black background has become something that most people who aren't even acquainted with Pink Floyd's music would recognize at any moment of the day.
The Dark Side Of The Moon starts of at a slow note, introducing the album through the almost ambient opener Speak To Me which already sets the album apart from their previous album Meddle on which the band had a completely different musical vision. Speak To Me flows into Breathe which flows into another ambient interlude On The Run. This is where the album actually gets going and picks up the pace, leading into the iconic and well known middle section with tracks like Money, Time and The Great Gig In The Sky, a truly great trio of songs that still stand as not only one of Pink Floyd's greatest moments, but also as one of the most notorious in brittish prog rock.
On The Run closes of with the ticking of clocks which are meant to work as the kind of intersection between itself and Time which picks up where On The Run stopped. This is where the album gets going and heads into a more cohesive flow of strong tracks upon strongs track, reaching the aforementioned trifecta that makes up the bulk of The Dark Side Of The Moon.
Time was a very important song to me when I first came across it a bunch of years ago. I was suffering quite badly from anxiety as I came to the realization that some of the time of my life had passed and those were years I'd never reach again. Some kind of middle age-crisis when I was barely 15 but the lyrics on Time really resonated with me during that moment, giving me hope that I wasn't alone in feeling this kind of me. It sounds cliché to bring in personal stories into a review but what I'm trying to do is bring some light to the lyrics of Time which are spot-on and one of the strongest points of the album, atleast lyrically.
Now Time leads into another track that I'd love to talk about which is The Great Gig In The Sky, a quite surprising and honestly misplaced track on this record. I do believe that an underlying theme of the record is coming of age and coming to terms with existance and the mortality of man, a point that The Great Gig In The Sky really hits home despite it's lack of lyrics.
Now this song is interesting because it honestly place on the record. It differs hugely from the other tracks on the record and comes in as this epic show stealer right in the middle of the album, between two of the strongest songs on the album. It doesn't fit the bill but it still works because of how ambigous it is, letting it fit into the thematic idea of The Dark Side Of The Moon. This is yet another track that resonated heavily with me as a confused 14-year old with crappy taste in music and it's a track that I still hold closely. But what I can't get out of my head is why on earth would they place this epic anthem smack dab in the middle of the record when it had been the phenomanl closer to pretty much any prog rock album from the same era.
The Dark Side Of The Moon is a concept and an idea that Pink Floyd executed incredibly well, there's no doubt to that, but it's yet another record on this list that doesn't quite appeal to me. Pink Floyd and progressive rock overall has never been one of my favorites and I doubt that fact will evere change but The Dark Side Of The Moon still stands as one of the most iconic brittish records out there, and even as one the most iconic albums of all time, right up there with Abbey Road, The Velvet Underground & Nico, Pet Sounds and Kind Of Blue.
Yet again, this is a record that's worth your time and from a historical perspective of music history, I do think it's one that most people should have heard atleast ones and atleast have some kind of opinion of.
The Dark Side Of The Moon
Pink Floyd
6.5/10
Anton Öberg Sysojev
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