Pink Floyd The Division Bell

The second Pink Floyd album recorded without founding member Roger Waters, The Division Bell was written mostly by guitarist and singer David Gilmour and keyboardist Rick Wright; it features Wright's first lead vocal on a Pink Floyd album since The Dark Side of the Moon (1973). Gilmour's fiancée, novelist Polly Samson, co-wrote many of the lyrics, which deal with themes of communication…

The Division Bell is the fourteenth studio album by the English progressive rock band Pink Floyd, released on 28 March 1994 by EMI Records in the United Kingdom and on 4 April by Columbia Records in the United States. The second Pink Floyd album recorded without founding member Roger Waters, The Division Bell was written mostly by guitarist and singer David Gilmour and keyboardist Richard Wright. It features Wright's first lead vocal on a Pink Floyd album since The Dark Side of the Moon (1973). Gilmour's fiancée, novelist Polly Samson, co-wrote many of the lyrics, which deal with themes of communication. It was the last Pink Floyd album recorded with Wright, who died in 2008.

The second post-Roger Waters Pink Floyd album is less forced and more of a group effort than A Momentary Lapse of Reason - keyboard player Richard Wright is back to full bandmember status and has co-writing credits on five of the 11 songs, even getting lead vocals on "Wearing the Inside Out." Some of David Gilmour's lyrics (co-written by Polly Samson and Nick Laird-Clowes of the Dream Academy) might be directed at Waters, notably "Lost for Words" and "A Great Day for Freedom," with its references to "the wall" coming down, although the more specific subject is the Berlin Wall and the fall of Communism…

A companion compilation to the sprawling 2019 box set The Later Years 1987-2019, this 80-minute collection distills that luxury item into something handy and affordable. In the winnowing process, it's revealed that the box indeed consists primarily of live material: all but five of the 12 tracks are live recordings, most taken from either the remixed version of the 1988 live double-LP Delicate Sound of Thunder or the full-length Live at Knebworth, which was recorded in 1990. Two cuts from the rejiggered A Momentary Lapse of Reason – which was revised to sound more like a classic Floyd album, à la The Division Bell – are here, along with an early rendition of "High Hopes" and the unheard instrumental "Marooned Jam," which also dates from 1994. None of this newer material is earthshaking, but it fits well next to the live versions of classic Floyd songs and, in turn, helps make a case for the merits of the Waters-less Floyd, even if it doesn't necessarily act as an enticing endorsement for the lavish accompanying box.

Pink Floyd Records will release 'Pink Floyd The Later Years', an 18-disc set (5 x CDs, 6 x Blu-Rays, 5 x DVDs, 2 x 7" plus exclusive photo book and memorabilia) covering the material created by David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright from 1987 onwards. The period generated record sales of over 40 million worldwide and included three studio albums: 'A Momentary Lapse of Reason', 'The Division Bell' and 'The Endless River' as well as two live albums: 'Delicate Sound of Thunder' and 'Pulse'. With additional production from David Gilmour and Andy Jackson, over 13 hours of unreleased audio and audiovisual material, including the sought-after 1989 Venice and 1990 Knebworth concerts, 'Pink Floyd The Later Years' is a must for all fans.

The Later Years 1987-2019 is an explicit sequel to The Early Years 1965-1972, the 2016 box set that rounded up nearly all the loose ends and detours from the first era of Pink Floyd, the fearless period when they were figuring out what the band could do. The Later Years covers a different time, when their most pressing challenge was demonstrating that they could thrive artistically and commercially without the presence of Roger Waters, the bassist/songwriter who charted Floyd's direction between 1973's Dark Side of the Moon and 1983's The Final Cut…

The Later Years 1987-2019 is an explicit sequel to The Early Years 1965-1972, the 2016 box set that rounded up nearly all the loose ends and detours from the first era of Pink Floyd, the fearless period when they were figuring out what the band could do. The Later Years covers a different time, when their most pressing challenge was demonstrating that they could thrive artistically and commercially without the presence of Roger Waters, the bassist/songwriter who charted Floyd's direction between 1973's Dark Side of the Moon and 1983's The Final Cut. In the parlance of these deluxe box sets, that decade amounts to "The Middle Years," a period far more prolific than 1987-2019, when the group released just two studio albums along with two live albums and a posthumous project that didn't arrive until 2014, by which time the group had largely been inactive for 20 years…