Contrast in the title between fragile noise and the boom of poor weather is effective only in name. Delicate Sound of Thunder is at its best when read aloud. Its title is the best part. Put it back on the shelf. Wade not into these filth-riddled, money-making waters. Pink Floyd was just about dead and buried but the name still had value, and it still does, hence the never-ending cycle of remastering their best efforts. Five nights of recordings and yet not a single moment of interest. A David Gilmour-heavy set where the more recent tracks overtake anything made in partnership with Roger Waters. Three years on and the sour feeling still remained for the lead-up to Delicate Sound of Thunder. A few bones are thrown to the crowd who are no doubt enjoying these riffs more than an at-home listener. It is hard to put a lights show onto vinyl, after all.
But the best bands can transcend the need for a visual medium. It is what makes Stop Making Sense from Talking Heads so endearing. These are lightning-in-a-bottle moments that cannot happen for everyone, though with Pink Floyd the tasteless tone, the repetitive showiness of Gilmour and his fret-work, impressive as it is, reigns supreme. Still, Shine On You Crazy Diamond sounds terrific in any form, even here, where the bulk of the show comprises a relatively tame adaptation of the finest progressive rock tracks around. Every song from Learning to Fly to Sorrow feels so vacant, so grubbily put together and ever so reliant on instrumental ineffectiveness. Thudding basslines for One of These Days as the guitar roars on, sounding more like a jet engine the further in it gets, is just one of many unnotable moments to be heard in Delicate Sound of Thunder.
Jam-like sessions can be glorious when lived in, out of the blue and seemingly improvised. Just turn to Geordie Greep for an example of how musical interests can bleed into one another on stage, shifting the tone and style of a performance. For Delicate Sound of Thunder, there is a coldness to the instrumental sets, and an artificial nature to the playing style, which sounds rigid and, in turn, underwhelming. A B-Side filled with hits and a seething, continuing resentment from Gilmour to ex-bandmate Waters can be heard. A gruff vocal tone from Gilmour is not the issue, but the relatively flat performance heard the whole way through is cause for concern. Waters may get some stick from fans for his later performances of Wish You Were Here, but not one of them is worse than this rip of the song, an acoustic dirge with interjections from Gilmour weakening what little joy could be extracted.
Money ends as more a peculiar footnote to the Delicate Sound of Thunder experience, another of the rocking brass which had dominated the charts in the years leading towards this performance. Some genuine venom to Gilmour’s vocal works on Another Brick in the Wal Pt II is understandable, and hilarious too. It was not like he could drop The Wall entirely from the set, though he doesn’t sound best pleased by its appearance. He sounds particularly underwhelmed by the set and his focus shifts on, dragging with it an overlong and overblown instrumental section which neither frustrates or forms some new view or direction of Pink Floyd as a band or Gilmour as a guitarist.
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