David Gilmour: Luck and Strange

An album review of the Pink Floyd guitarist’s first solo album in nine years

David Gilmour

Luck and Strange

Sony

Luck and Strange is David Gilmour’s fifth studio album, his first in nearly a decade — and yes, it immediately sounds like Gilmour. A single note, and you know it’s him. And, as has been the way for the last (nearly) 40 years, since he took the helm at Pink Floyd, Inc. and across his solo recordings, we start with an “intro” track of just guitar and keys. So, we’re in Floyd territory instantly, but that is perhaps even more overt on the opening song proper, the title track, which features a keyboard part from the late Rick Wright (taken from a 2007 jam).

My first impressions of this album have largely remained — as with last year’s Rolling Stones record, I feel this almost has no right being this good! At 78, Gilmour’s voice is really remarkable, his voicings and phrasing on the guitar remain impeccable, inimitable really, despite their multitudinous influence. But I’ve added to those first impressions, as the album has really started to seep under my skin. And, only in a good way. Perhaps what I enjoy most about this, particularly given all the potshots about the lyrical content of Gilmour’s material over the years (CliffsNote: they’re weak, he’s not bloody Roger Waters, etc, yawn) is the fact that a 78 year old man is singing about aging, death, frailty, and family.

And it is truly a family affair this time. Polly Samson, Gilmour’s wife and muse, has been the main lyric writer for at least the last 30 years, and that remains. But daughter Romany contributes harp to two tracks, backing vocals to several, and sings lead on the beguiling single, Between Two Points, a cover of a 1999 song by British dream-pop duo, The Montgolfier Brothers. Son, Gabriel, also contributes backing vocals. The original was apparently discovered by Gilmour on a playlist. I bet he did a double-take and wondered if his wife had written the lyrics, for the distance between two points, and ideas around communication have been the recurring motif in Samson’s lyrical worldview since The Division Bell.

Guitar-wise, the outro solo to The Piper’s Call, the exploratory calm of his spidery, spiralling work on A Single Spark, and the beautiful, brief instrumental intermission, Vita Brevis, are all moments that sit alongside post-Roger highlights from Gilmour’s career, such as Sorrow, The Division Bell’s title track, and spacey, spectral instrumentals Cluster One and Marooned, and of course the brilliant work across most of 2006’s On An Island and some of 2015’s Rattle That Lock (and the collaboration with The Orb, Metallic Spheres).

Luck and Strange isn’t Gilmour’s finest solo work, that would be his self-titled debut, followed by On An Island (or maybe it’s Island, followed by the debut), but it is right up there with his finest moments since 1984’s About Face. And that it can even rank with music he was making 30 and nearly 40 years ago is astounding.

It will not convert new fans. That is not the idea, nor the approach. Instead, it builds on the sound and feel of David Gilmour: Solo Artist. And (further) legitimises a side-gig (now the main gig) as singer/songwriter and instrumentalist outside of the enormous, towering entity. But always just in the shadow of it too. Of course.

(Find a better contemplative rock album by a 78 year old guitar player willing to look and sound and feel his age, but also still belie it, and, yeah, then, I’ll listen to whatever valid criticisms you might have).