The Division Bell

Pink Floyd | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 5, 1994)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Columbia
• ASIN: B000002A3T
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Music
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (523 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #44,759 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Cluster One

2. What Do You Want From Me

3. Poles Apart

4. Marooned

5. A Great Day For Freedom

6. Wearing The Inside Out

7. Take It Back

8. Coming Back To Life

9. Keep Talking

10. Lost For Words

11. High Hopes

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

As Roger Waters's solo career set into a sunset of suspiciously self-serving Wall revivals and compelling if modest-selling solo efforts, his former band became one of the few outfits in the soft live market of the 1990s to burnish its stadium-filling appeal. But their recorded output wasn't quite so rosy. As all post-Dark Side of the Moon albums must have a Big Important Theme, The Division Bell is vaguely about levels of separation (did you say, duh!?), with more than one not-so-opaque lyrical jab at the estranged Waters. But there's a sense that the band may have put more thought into its trademark audio gimmickry (well represented here by the actual sound of the earth's crust cracking--you don't get that on Rage Against the Machine albums!--and a "spoken" intro by Dr. Stephen Hawking, or rather his voice synthesizer) than it did into its songs this time around. The opening "Cluster One" has a hypnotic minimalist lure that dissolves all too quickly into the bluesy waffle of "What Do You Want From Me," while Floyd Mach III leader Dave Gilmour's usually lyrical guitar work is uninspired throughout, a definite Floydian slip. Still, the band maddeningly manages a few moments of the old grandeur here and there. The Division Bell is not a great Pink Floyd album, but an all-too-fallible simulation. --Jerry McCulley

Product Description

Audio CD.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

65 of 69 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A masterpiece, and better than You remember. March 19, 2010

By John E. Wilkins

Format:Audio CD

I don't normally do album reviews, but after reading all the wiki entries and so-called reviews of the Division Bell, this boy ain't gonna shut up anymore.

Once and for all, ladies and gentlemen, please get over Roger Waters' departure. It's so old and tired to read review after review that has nothing more than the feel of being written by Waters himself. I love Waters with Floyd, of course, but if the man can't get his crap together and play nice with this epic group, then he deserves to sit in his puddle of re-re-re-re-resurrecting the Wall over, over and over. That kind of behavior is a sad vision of someone becoming a parody of himself.

From start to finish, the Division Bell is every bit the decades-length masterpiece that is Pink Floyd. Period, end of story. Any nay-saying is just simply Twinkies hitting Gibraltar.

The last time I listened to it, I turned out the lights when "High Hopes" came on, and was thankful for an empty house and a loud stereo so that I could enjoy this epic all over again. The album, to me, is simply haunting in the best way possible, making me long for something so real and so fictional all at once that my breath is taken away.

Before I go into the ground, I want the funeral parlor to play "High Hopes" at whatever memorial service I have, big or small, ashes or bones, wind or stillness.

Those are the best words I know to give for a review here on such a great album, one that will forever be cemented in my top five, if not top three.

Stop taking a dump on it, put your hang-ups and nonsense aside, and play it again.

Breathe, folks.

38 of 44 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Gilmour gives us his all--and shines with 'Division Bell' January 12, 2001

By Jeff Edwards VINE™ VOICE

Format:Audio CD

The debate rages on--and is likely to continue for as long as original Pink Floyd fans face off against a new crop of younger kids who believe that post-Roger Waters hasn't harmed the band in any way. I find myself somewhere in the middle. Do I miss Roger Waters? Of COURSE I do, he is a musical genius (even if a bit arrogant) and you cannot lose someone of his talent and still remain the same. HOWEVER, no matter HOW you view his departure, the rest of the band has been able to fill that void with a couple of CD's (and a couple Live releases as well) that allowed Gilmour and others to shine in ways they never could in the shadow of Roger. Of COURSE, Pink Floyd will always be a better band united rather than divided much like The Beatles were better together than individually--but even without Waters their last couple of CD's were amazingly good...this one being the better of the two (although I would place 'On The Turning Away' at the same level as ANY previous Floyd song).

I have been in radio for years, and if the response to Pink Floyd's music by the listeners I have talked to is any indication, folks miss Roger, but they welcome (the majority anyway) Pink Floyd anyway they can get it, and view the band without him as still very worthy. I have had debates with my listeners sometimes for hours--some of them open minded, some view supporting Pink Floyd without Waters' as a traitorous act, well I consider myself a very open-minded person when it comes to music--ALL kinds of music, and 'The Division Bell' truly is a Pink Floyd album in all respects...not as good as 'The Wall' or 'Animals' or one of the all-time classics, 'Dark Side of The Moon' but STILL, a top notch CD with some masterful music performed by some of the best in the business.... True fans will appreciate this album because no matter what your views may be, this is just good rock & roll music.

-DJ Jazzy Jeff Read more ›

43 of 51 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Gilmour, Mason & Wright December 4, 1999

By J O'Malley

Format:Audio CD

The Division Bell features David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Rick Wright coming together and recording a very unified and reflective Pink Floyd album. All three with bassist Guy Pratt were the primary performers on the album produced once again by Gilmour and Bob Ezrin.

The album's primary theme is the breakdown of communication between people. The opening track Cluster One is a eerie and atmospheric collage of sounds and music. What Do You Want From Me features Gilmour's howling guitars. Poles Apart is a etheral and somber song. Marooned is a instrumental reeking of atmosphere and ironically earned the band it's first grammy award. Take It Back is a earnest and anthemic song about man's relationship with the earth, Lost For Words is apparently about Roger Waters, and the closing song High Hopes is a powerful and uplifting song about one's past, present and future.

The Division Bell may not be a true return to epic the albums of their past but it a welcomed return for Pink Floyd as a true working unit and showing that their music can stand up on it's own and not just in the shadows of their past.

24 of 28 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The swan song of Pink Floyd gets an excellent remastering September 29, 2011

By Terrence J. Reardon

Format:Audio CD

Pink Floyd's final studio album The Division Bell was released in April of 1994 (a full two full months before I graduated High School).
The Division Bell was the first new studio album for the band since their 1987 comeback A Momentary Lapse of Reason. The band spent four years on the Momentary Lapse project recording and touring (the tour ended in 1990).
The band were inactive for all of 1991 (apart from recording the soundtrack to the auto racing film they produced La Carerra Panamericana) and spent 1992 putting together the Shine On box set. It was during an American radio interview in late 1992 that singer and guitarist David Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason revealed that the band would finally begin work on a new album in 1993. Gilmour and Mason, along with a fully reinstated keyboard player Rick Wright (whom was a sideman on the Momentary Lapse album and tour) recorded The Division Bell throughout 1993 and January of 1994 at David's own houseboat studio The Astoria in London plus Abbey Road and Britannia Row Studios with David co-producing the album with Bob Ezrin.
When I first put this album on after buying it on street date, it reminded me of Wish You Were Here which is my favorite Pink Floyd album. This was the band's first theme album in years with its concept about lack of communication.
The opening "Cluster One" is a superb instrumental and one of their best ever. "What Do You Want From Me" sounds like "Have a Cigar (pt. 2)" and is a great song and David and Rick's music just being as great as ever. The haunting "Poles Apart" starts out being about Syd and his descent into madness while the second verse (Hey You!...) addresses the demise of David's relationship with Waters (which would somewhat resolve in 2005) and then ends with Gilmour's own self doubts about where he stands in the grand scheme of Pink Floyd and realizing in the end that his own personal life and love is where he keeps his sanity grounded. The Grammy winning instrumental "Marooned" is a lovely piece of music which is superb and Gilmour's guitar rising and falling like a solitary seagull. "A Great Day For Freedom" talks about the fall of The Berlin Wall and the fall of one's relationships. "Wearing The Inside Out" is Rick's personal aside about his own exile both physically from the band and mentally and featured returning sax player Dick Parry whom last played on Wish You Were Here and was Wright's first lead vocal on a Floyd track since "Time" on Dark Side 21 years earlier.
"Take it Back" is the closest Floyd ever came to a love song. "Coming Back to Life" is David's song to his now wife Polly Samson whom brought him back to happiness after all the traumas with Roger and the demise of his first marriage to Ginger in 1990. Polly was actually proofreader to David's lyrics on The Division Bell and out of kindness gave her credit (even if it was just for either proofreading or one phrase as he wrote the majority of lyrics on his songs alone). "Keep Talking" was the song that got loads of airplay on US FM rock radio when released and sounds like classic Floyd from Dark Side and Wish You Were Here era Floyd and still sounds great today. "Lost For Words" dealt with the demise and failed reconciliation with Waters (they somewhat reconciled in 2005). The closing atmospheric epic (which is now fittingly the final Pink Floyd song as of 2008 after the death of Rick Wright) "High Hopes" was the best Floyd track since "Comfortably Numb" which was lyrically somewhat autobiographical and was also about the things you gained and lost in life. Plus, Gilmour's classical and lap steel guitar work here is hard to put in words.
When the album was released (I bought the CD the day it came out and the aqua blue vinyl and cassette), it was an instant smash hitting #1 in its first week here in the States (and also in the band's native UK) and stayed put for four weeks in the Spring of 1994 whilst the band toured in support of the album and sold close to four million copies in the US alone and many more worldwide.
The Division Bell is a great album and as fate turned out to be the band's final studio album in the wake of longtime manager Steve O'Rourke and keyboard player Rick Wright's passings in 2003 and 2008 respectively and Gilmour having four children with current wife Polly Samson. IMHO, The Division Bell ended the band's career with a bang!
In 2011, the album is re-released in a remastered CD version as part of the Why Pink Floyd? campaign done superbly by James Guthrie and Joel Plante. The album sounds as great as the limited vinyl which came out in 1994. The booklet is also excellent.
Hugely recommended! Read more ›