Customer Reviews
contains the single best Pink Floyd song of all time.. - By: Mr. M. A. Reed, 01 Jan 2008 
"Meddle" - the 1971 album - contains the bands signature piece "Echoes" : a massive, definitive space-rock-funk-jam that lasts about 22 minutes, is the perfect accompaniment to the end of "2001", & was undoubtedly the absolute, brain-mashing highlight of 2006's David Gilmour Tour : seeing it performed by the ersatz version of the Floyd - containing 2/3rds of the final touring lineup - on his 2006 tour, assaulted by lasers & smokein the confines of the Royal Albert Hall was one of the musical highlights of my life. Nonetheless, we're getting off track : "Meddle" is a great record that is the first foreshadowing of the creative heights the band will achieve. A fine record worth buying.
Forget Dark Side of the Moon, THIS is the best Pink Floyd album! - By: New Gold Dreamer, 26 Nov 2007 
Rating: 9.5/10
Best tracks: "Echoes", "One of These Days", "A Pillow of Winds".
I'm listening to this after having just written a relatively unsavoury review of Pink Floyd's supposed masterpiece Dark Side of the Moon, & it does annoy me this gets a fraction of the attention of that sacred cow yet it's about three hundred times better. No banality, no self-importance, no Clare Torry warbling & making your ears bleed. True, there's no "Money", but Meddle is one of the very best Pink Floyd albums; weird, wonderful, beautiful & often very spectacular. Obviously the huge "Echoes" dominates proceedings, but let's concentrate on the fantastic first side to begin with. "One of These Days" has one hell of a groovy twin-bass line & fantastic guitar effects which build & build to a cathartic finale (that you can almost dance to....) that I wish could have gone even longer than it does. From the ashes of this thrilling opener is "A Pillow of Winds", is a bit like the whole of their soundtrack album Obscured by Clouds condensed into five beautiful minutes, featuring gorgeous, bucolic guitars & autumnal atmospherics. This features one of David Gilmour's sweetest vocals, the feel is so mellow & pretty you just can't help but be swept away by its calming breezes. "Fearless" wins me over ever so slightly less so than anything else here, but it's a real good one, with some real nice moments, & for someone who doesn't follow football, I even like the bit where Liverpool fans singing "You'll Never Walk Alone" at the end! A song like "San Tropez" is the kind of thing that would be regarded as too whimsical, too quirky, too...dare I say it....fun....for Pink Floyd to bother with after this album. Too bad. I like this, it's a good little song, it's nice, it's good, it'll more than do! They'd definitely go nowhere near the likes of "Seamus" after this either. Probably the slightest thing they've ever recorded, it's simply a blues-inspired howl about a dog. Aaaah. Despite being totally inconsequential, it's still better than 90% of The Wall, so there. So, allin all, side one of Echoes starts of amazing, continues to stay strong, & then mellows out with a couple of very pleasant fillers.
Now. Enter. Side Two. "Echoes" originally took up a whole side of vinyl backin the seventies, & it's a monster. Oddly enough, Pink Floyd sometimes get draftedin with the whole progressive rock scene along side the likes of Yes & Emerson, Lake & Palmer, yet unlike those two bands, Pink Floyd's music is all about linearity & simplicity. The only thing really connecting these bands is their size. "Echoes" however, IS a progressive rock song, one of the very few they ever created (this & the "Atom Heart Mother" suite, essentially) & it's a masterpiece. It's probably the best Pink Floyd song ever. Funny that, calling it a song. It's over twenty minutes long, goes through lots of changes & moods & is closer to being a classical experience than a song. Dreamy, eerie, lovelyin places, deeply, wildly strangein others, thrilling & grippingin a few more & also proudly host to, hands-down, the best bit of any Pink Floyd song, ever. I'm talking about the mesmerising jam-section where the band play it all funky & loose for about four to five minutes. This bit sees the band's rhythm section stretch out & bliss themselves into oblivionin a way they'd never done before, & save the similarly funky mid-sectionin Animals' "Pigs (Three Different Ones)", never would again. And with its whale-call interlude about ten minutes into it, it's got the weirdest stretch of any post-Barrett song. The guitars are genuinely, spellbindingly terrific. The vocals are great. The whole thing's a classic.
Listen to Meddle. Forget Dark Side of the Moon. Did I say that this is one of the very best Pink Floyd albums? Scratch that; it IS the best Pink Floyd album.
Echoes: The finest track - By: Mr. A. P. Bartram, 29 Oct 2007 I think Meddle was the first album I bought as a teenager, & I've replaced my copy at least 10 times! It's the top of my list, because it contains the track Echoes, possibly the finest progrock track ever recorded (in my opinion). Everything about Echoes is perfect, from the opening to the close, it wouldn't stand the test of time should any part be removed. I've listened to Echoes at least twice a week for 35 years now, & I know I'll never tire of it.
It's simply the best song ever!
CD doesn't sound right - By: Mr. Stephen J. Pratt, 15 Oct 2007 I like vinyl, but I'm not obsessive. I have some CDs that sound just as good to my ears as the vinyl version. But this is not one of them. This is particularly noticeable on "Echoes". The track sounds really good on the CD, but "Echoes" isn't just really good: it's phenomenal. The CD version wipes out most of the psychedelic nature of the song, which is what lifts it to such heights of brilliance on record. The opening pings, on my vinyl (despite a number of scratches) send psychedelic ripples through your brain; the opening pings on the CD just don't do that. David Gilmour's slide guitar on the opening two minutes or so has a beautiful, floating quality on the vinyl. On the CD it sounds like a pleasant melody & that's it. As to the rest of the album: "One Of These Days" I love, though - you guessed it - the CD loses a bit of the rawness (not as bad as on "Echoes", however); "A Pillow of Winds" is one of those wistful Gilmour numbers that I really like, not as good as "Fat Old Sun" but similar; "Fearless" is good, but why the football song at the end rather than a guitar or keyboard solo? "St. Tropez" is nicely sneeringin its lyrics, but not a very pleasing tune (like some of Waters's later numbers); "Seamus" isn't a classic, but I still think that using a howling dog is amusing.
One Sided Affair - By: Malcolm Robertson, 05 May 2007 Meddle was my first Vinyl Rock Album. Given to me as a gift with the message 'Side Two listen & enjoy'. Meddle is indeed an album of two halves. Side one is a comfortable intro with pleasant songs that are somewhat dreamy utilising a variety of musical styles but with no real memorable Floyd classics.
Side two however requires isolation from all natural disturbances such as partners, mothers, television or any other intrusion as `Echoes' is a serious piece of work. From the first `plink' on the piano one's imagination is taken into a stereophonic world of masterly musical paradise. This enigmatic harmonious masterpiece probably sealed Floyd's future creativity. There is a moment during the `electronic seagull' sequence that risks losing its integrity however from the ashes comes a magnificent guitar crescendo that lights the tinder box for the long & beautiful ending to a most magnificent piece of musical dexterity.
