A Momentary Lapse Of Reason (studio album)
by Pink Floyd

From Strangel 01/29/2025 11:00

I blame this album for being the reason that it took me so long to get into Floyd. It was the first album I heard of theirs as a teenager and it was boring to my virgin ears. As the years have passed I recognise that it was just a very uninspired Floyd album and that impression rubbed off on the casual listener. Glad I took the time to delve into their back catalogue.

I'm not crazy about this album since the absence of Roger Waters's songwriting was felt right away. That said, there is still very good guitar on songs like Sorrow and On the Turning Away. But the Division Bell ended up being a much better record.

Probably their worst album by most people's judgement. Learning To Fly is a nice song, and One Slip is tolerable but nothing to write home about. The rest of it is just... meh.

Very underrated and deserves many more listens from real fans.

From AndrewJFisher 07/20/2021 23:53

This was the first Floyd I knew, born in 1980, I heard "Learning to Fly" when it came on the radio in '87. Around the same time I heard "Brick II" and realized there were two Floyds. I also heard Roger's "The Tide is Turning", but only much later when I became interested in classic rock, found out that Roger had previously been in Floyd and that he wrote The Wall and left the group not long after, hence the new Pink Floyd sound. Momentary Lapse was the first Floyd album I bought, but in late 2001, as a cheap CD. "Learning to Fly" was "my Floyd" at that stage and the classic stuff was before my time, so AMLOR was my starting point. I was a bit surprised by the credits' having so many guest musicians and songwriters for a start and a bit underwhelmed, Gilmour's voice is technically good, but boring compared to the (not technically good necessarily) kind of singing I preferred. The songs seemed a little dull too. "Dogs of War" is a bit plodding. I also recalled "On the Turning Away", it had never been something that enjoyed much on the radio. And "A New Machine"? That certainly didn't grow on me! Actually the instrumental "Terminal Frost", which is sort of part of the "New Machine" concept, being in between the two parts, was the first song I liked, however it was a handful of repeated piano notes.

I think Floyd were using Dire Straits as their main reference and guide for their comeback, oddly I thought certain parts of The Final Cut sounded like Dire Straits i.e. compare "Two Suns in the Sunset" with "Tunnel of Love", but Final Cut was clearly not meant as an attempt to match up with Dire Straits or other big bands of the '80s. I also thought Mr. Mister's "Broken Wings" is important here, a lot of AMLOR sounds like that, a sort of new-age/rock. New age music has often overlapped with prog. rock, take Mike Oldfield, also jazz fusion. Of course AMLOR also fits with '80s, anthemic, uplifting stadium rock, well not something completely new for Floyd, there was "Run Like Hell" on The Wall, which stemmed from a song on Gilmour's self-titled solo album. A lot of people complain about the lyrics for which Gilmour got help from Anthony Moore, Phil Manzanera and Patrick Leonard, except for "Sorrow" which Gilmour wrote himself. I can't think of a really cringey lyric, nothing really good either though I liked ♫"It's a sin that somehow...light is changing to shadow"♫. I didn't realize at first that Gilmour hadn't contributed much to lyrics previously in Floyd and it seems it was often a case of he and Rick Wright composing instrumentals together or apart or compose stuff that Roger Waters liked so that he would add lyrics to it and/or rearrange it. He hadn't previously been in a position of leadership as such so this was something new.

On the issue of authenticity, while AMLOR was more or less a Gimour solo album with a bit more outside help than his two previous, I think it's fair, if Waters didn't want to use the name anymore, for Gilmour to make solo albums under the Pink Floyd name and let the people decide whether it was still Floyd or whether they preferred old Floyd or new Floyd. I suppose it's easy it understand AMLOR outselling The Final Cut, Final Cut was unlikely to win any new listeners, while AMLOR with its big production would've attracted people like myself who had not previously heard or taken much notice of Floyd.

From Squonk007 06/15/2021 09:31

Whilst I'm a big Gilmour fan the album is sadly lacking as a Floyd album. That missing spark is Roger.

Not up to floyd standard, but there are still some enjoyable moments. The division bell is clearly the better of the gilmour lead floyd incarnation.

I was so excited at the time on hearing this was coming out. How the joy turned to disappointment. No matter how many times I listened to it, it wasn't going to grow on me. There day in the sun was over. This album was relegated to the bottom of the pile never to see the light of day again.

Not as consistently good as previous albums, but it still has some excellent moments. Learning to Fly and On the Turning Away are obviously great. Voters here seem to be sleeping on Sorrow, and that's a shame. One of the band's finest songs ever right there.

From jeremy9 12/19/2019 08:46

It's not a very good album but it is still Pink Floyd Album