Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour returns with stylish fifth solo album, ‘Luck and Strange’

On this particularly successful album where his guitar playing and his voice sound like the first day, the legendary musician has surrounded himself with a younger team, who energize his compositions.

David Gilmour’s first album since Rattle That Lock nine years ago, Luck and Strange, released Friday, September 6, will delight fans of the legendary guitarist of Pink Floyd. Already because this album seems a little unexpected: when he sold 120 of his precious guitars five years ago, it was difficult not to see it as the prelude to a quiet retirement far from the spotlight, while he turns 78 this year.

Then came the lockdown. An imposed downtime, used to publish online every week literary and musical videos featuring his whole little family under the name Van Trap Family: the guitarist and his wife the writer Polly Samson, their harpist daughter Romany Gilmour (currently 22 years old), their adopted son Charlie Gilmour (35 years old) and his baby, but also the pets. It was the starting point of a renewal that led to this new liberated album, where, as we will see, the family plays its part.

From the opening, David Gilmour’s cosmic style stirs the guts and memories on the stripped-down instrumental Black Cat. The next one, this Luck and Strange in weightlessness that gives its name to the album, confirms that the old Pink Floyd has not lost his touch. This piece summons a ghost since it is built from a jam with Rick Wright, the organist of Floyd, recorded in 2007, a year before his death. The title, where we hear his Hammond organ and electric piano parts, is a splendid stretched blues where Gilmour’s signature style, but also his voice, teleport us irremediably into the past.

In fact, there is nostalgia on this chiaroscuro album, including in the often dark and pessimistic lyrics, brewing the desperate wars of return, old age and the death that comes. Lyrics written tailor-made for her husband by Polly Samson, as has been the case for thirty years. But there is also joy, life and change compared to his previous solo albums. Because David Gilmour has finally found a partner who is his equal.

To co-produce this record, Gilmour wanted someone who could look at his work with fresh eyes and say what he thought, “without deference”.

His choice fell on British producer Charlie Andrew, 44, best known for his work with the indie band alt-J. A visibly unimpressed guy, who asked after listening to the first demos: “Do we really need a solo here? And do they all have to fade out?”.

In the studio, the man shook up the legend a bit, pushing him to his limits and multiplying the takes and playing styles. He also brought into the project alt-J arranger Will Gardner, whom Gilmour calls a “genius”, as well as three new musicians with jazz and punk-jazz backgrounds: bassist Tom Herbert (Polar Bear), keyboardist Rob Gentry and drummer Adam Betts, known for providing the complex rhythms of drum & bass as a live musician for Goldie.

A dream team, augmented by the legendary American drummer Steve Gadd, who energizes the music of Luck and Strange by opening up new horizons for him.

Carried by Gilmour’s unmistakable voice, The Piper’s Callon the mirror of celebrity, progresses slowly, until the guitar, at first discreet, begins to meow and then to lash brilliantly at the end of the journey. This crooner’s voice is at its peak, illuminated by choirs, on A Single Sparkwhere the guitar dressed in violins plays on velvet, and on the wonderful ballad Sings, where the six-string has been completely forgotten in favor of… strings.

One of the most haunting titles, Between Two Points (a cover of an obscure group, The Montgolfier Brothers) is not sung by the father but by his daughter, Romany Gilmour, a harpist with the voice of an angel.

The album, perhaps his best solo work, closes with Scatteredwritten by three people with Gilmour, his wife and their son Charlie, with a nod to the heartbeat that opens Dark Side of The Moon but also to the intro ofEchoes.

The two bonus tracks also have some nice surprises in store. These are: I Have Ghosts, a delicate folk track on which Gilmour’s voice comes closer than ever to that of Leonard Cohen, and to the original jam with Rick Wright that gave rise to Luck and Strange.

Three pieces of news to finish, two bad and one good. The bad news is that no stop in France is planned for the tour that Gilmour has planned for the coming months, and that the negotiations for the sale of the Pink Floyd catalog are progressing (which will lead us, if necessary, to find our favorite songs in car and deodorant adverts). The good news is that Gilmour plans to quickly record another album of the same caliber in the process. Because he has, he says, finally found a team of musicians with whom he feels good.

The album “Luck and Strange” (Sony), released on September 6, 2024