It's Friday the 13th but I'm not really superstitious these days so I'll just walk under a ladder and head out onto a limb and launch this little piece: People, well most people (to be honest I’ve not actually spoken to all that many) often treat Dark Side of the Moon as Pink Floyd’s unquestionable, statistically and plaudit winning high spot. Number one album for x amount of weeks etc. I can understand why, it's all true. That’s simply because it’s their most popular, polished and arguably commercial bit of work done within an album format. Maybe just not their most inspired. I think that Meddle is the record in which Pink Floyd actually comes together with their best mix of material. It’s the perfect one side of shorter pieces and the flip side being the single longer work, “Echoes,” that sets it out as my model for listening perfection.
Meddle is Floyd’s alternative take on the then still developing prog rock landscape, where their drifting experimentation finally locks into something more advanced without losing the eccentric edge that always made them one of the most interesting bands of their time. They arguably created their own genre here and built the album around it. If Dark Side brings together the philosophy, the message, and the soundscapes; Meddle invents and test-pilots them.*
The clearest evidence is the track “Echoes” itself. Nothing on Dark Side comes close to its ambition or tonal range. It isn’t just a long track, it’s a journey, moving from calm to disorientation to something almost spiritual without ever feeling contrived or forced. Dark Side is full of brilliant songs that link together to illustrate a set of concepts, but none of them travel quite as far as “Echoes” does. If albums are judged by their highest peak, Meddle wins outright.
There’s also a difference in how the two albums feel. Dark Side is immaculate, but that perfection can feel stylized and cold. Meddle breathes. Tracks like “A Pillow of Winds,” “One of These Days,” and “Fearless” are lived in rather than engineered, as if the band is discovering the music as it unfolds instead of executing some master plan. That looseness gives the album a warmth and humanity Dark Side sometimes sacrifices for its precision.
Thematically, Dark Side aims for universality and some ultimate explanation of things: time, money, madness, death. No explanation ever comes; it just is. It’s profound and disturbing. There’s nothing wrong with that, but Meddle’s message is quieter, more measured, and more inward. It doesn’t explain itself or push a message; it only invites you to go along with it. That makes it less immediately accessible but far more rewarding in the longer term. I’m never bored with any of the Meddle material, after a whole lot of listens across decades.
Dark Side of the Moon fully deserves its reputation; the sales and the numbers are crazy, but reputation isn’t the same as greatness. It is Pink Floyd at their most perfect, and it will never be repeated. Meddle is Pink Floyd probably at their most freely creative and adventurous, before the big bucks, big stages, and bigger disagreements came along. If what you value is risk, atmosphere, and genuine exploration rather than flawless execution, Meddle isn’t just better, it’s the album that made everything that followed it possible.
Please note I’m not saying it’s been downhill for Floyd all the way since Meddle; that would be nonsense. Their subsequent work has produced great and lasting material; a lot of heat and a few duffers, but… Meddle wins it for me.
* For clarity, I should add that one album sits squarely between Meddle and Dark Side, that being Obscured by Clouds, which came out in 1972. As it’s a soundtrack album, some might say it doesn’t really count as part of their progressive and creative lineage. I’d disagree with that, it’s an album I always quite liked, though it can be seen as a bit of a sidestep. That might also be said of More, another soundtrack album, but again, well worth a listen.
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