Larger issues with Spotify are at play – for artists and listeners. The right way and the ethical way to listen are divided, and the space between both playing fields growing. How does an artist get the financial support they deserve if they are not on a platform broad enough to feed them new fans? It is a vicious cycle and it is capitalised on by those with the catalogues big enough to make the most of a gruesome truth of music streaming. Taylor Swift pops a new track or eleven on a series of releases while Pink Floyd hooks an intern into making a post-Roger Waters round-up of David Gilmour pieces. Self-congratulatory compilations like Home create a minor buzz on their release and turn a few heads to the fascinating selection of songs made on vague words and fashioned like driftwood, the EP graveyard gains another body of work.
There is nothing homely about Home. No comfort from the band nor skill in picking these tracks. To actively seek out this cobbled-together collection is to be the true Pink Floyd completionist. You gain nothing from Home. Nothing that is not already featured on the albums which feature the likes of High Hopes and Sorrow. All listeners gain from this is another footnote in the passive-aggressive war of words and work between Gilmour and Waters. Petty creations at best set on rewriting history. An ugly history, no doubt about it, but flinging EP collections featuring the best works of Pink Floyd and snubbing the bandmate responsible for the best works feels rather estranged from reality. Still, the songs remain of disturbed and solid quality, it is the action of piecing them together under the guise of new material which settles poorly.
Mark Knopfler-like guitar work fades through Terminal Frost and the Dire Straits influences continue on The Dogs of War. It fundamentally changes the sound of Pink Floyd but the band has always been about a continued overhaul of their sound. The Dogs of War is a masterclass in effective progression, it is what their rock was based on after all. Saxophones and howling cries of those hounds in conflict mark an otherwise high point of a defunct EP – more because it reminds listeners of A Momentary Lapse of Reason than anything else. The songs themselves remain as they are – solid. Quiet releases of bootleg recordings are in no short supply for the likes of Pink Floyd and Bob Dylan but it is the frequency of them which may shock some listeners. What becomes rather apparent here is the well of wonders and listenable quality is running dry for the Floyd gang.
Why else would you pair remastered songs in a disconnected EP? It serves as a reminder of decent instrumental efforts from the Gilmour-led era of the band but beyond that, it has nothing of relevancy. A cheap and lazy project which can be slammed for its undesirably vacant cover art and the generally lacklustre interpretations of the theme running through these songs. Home implies what, exactly? Some feeling of familiarity or a reminder Pink Floyd is still hanging around as modern artists like The Lemon Twigs and Dea Matrona adapt the rock of the 1960s and 1970s into new forms. More can be done with the exceptional works found on Home, and it is solely the fault of the in-house team now in charge of a legacy ripped through by bandmates and streaming platforms.
