As I had every Pink Floyd album released up to that point, I obviously went out and bought David Gilmour's solo album when it came out in 1978. I was disappointed and at the time thought there was only one decent track on it.
"There's No Way Out Of Here" was the only track I could remember, and I only recently discovered this was a cover version, having been first released by Unicorn in 1976, for whom Gilmour had produced three albums.
The album opens with "Mihalis" which turns out to be an instrumental with nice guitar chord progressions. It could easily have fitted into Floyd's "Animals" LP and was surprisingly very good.
"There's No Way Out Of Here" remains a good song and has a strong hook. The organ, pedal steel guitar and the unexpected girly backing vocals all impressively add to it.
"Cry From The Street" is a fairly forgettable blues song but has an OK guitar solo for outro, sounding like the guitar from the song "Run From Hell" from "The Wall".
"So Far Away" is a nice piano ballad and the playing reminded me of early Elton John. It has similar chord progressions to "Comfortably Numb", a pretty guitar solo break and the backing vocals hint at those on "Us And Them".
Side Two starts with "Short And Sweet" which was co-written with English folk-singer Roy Harper, who sung "Have A Cigar" on the "Wish You Were Here" album. It has a promising guitar intro and bass riff but the song is desperately dull.
"Raise My Rent" is a slow instrumental with the guitar part similar to the middle section of "Dogs" from Animals and some nice organ low in the mix. However, it is nearly 6 minutes long but should have been about half the time.
The blues flavoured "No Way" is another 6 minutes track with Gilmour's unmistakable, distinctive guitar sound, but is another song that didn't live long in the memory.
"Deafinitely" is a self-indulgent blues style instrumental with one of the guitar breaks being very similar to the end of "Sheep" from Animal.
"I Can't Breathe Any More" has a very slow verse but cranks up for the instrumental break. It all seemed very formulaic and I could help think "what is the point ?"
In summary, the album was not as bad as I remembered, and I would now say there were three good tracks on it and some other half-decent moments. In some ways it feels more like a demo of material to be submitted for a Pink Floyd album, which would then be improved or combined with other material. In hindsight, it is noticeable that very few of the previous Pink Floyd songs were solo contributions from Gilmour, and all the outstanding numbers where he has credit involved collaborations with Roger Waters or Richard Wright. Lyric writing doesn't seem to be his strong point, and it is perhaps instructive that by far and away the best song here was written by someone else.
Although we were not to know at the time, it was a good indication of what the Pink Floyd albums after Roger Waters would sound like, and I don't have any of them !
Track Listing :
Side One :
1. Mihalis
2. There's No Way Out Of Here
3. Cry From The Street
4. So Far Away
1. Short And Sweet
2. Raise My Rent
3. No Way
4. Deafinitely
5. I Can't Breathe Any More
Released 1978
UK Chart Position : 17
There's No Way Out Of Here ( - 1978 )
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