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The great American tax haven: why the super-rich love South Dakota
Focusing on the post-Roger Water period, 1987-2014, The Later Years includes a reworking and remastering of 1987’s Learning to Fly, the band’s most straightforward rock album, along with 1994’sDivision Bell and 2014’s Endless River. The new box set also includes material from several live concerts, including that used for the live releases, The Delicate Sound of Thunder (1988), and Pulse(1995).In addition to reproduced memorabilia from touring and company PR, the new 18-disc box set also contains previously unreleased concert recordings from Venice and Knebworth, as well as new documentaries about the band. Overall, the set boasts 13 hours of previously unreleased material from the final phase of Pink Floyd’s history.
This period was less cynical than the Roger Waters era of Pink Floyd, ingeniously incorporating elements of hope and wonder into the band’s signature innovation and experimentation. If The Wall’s “Another Brick” spoke profoundly to my 12-year old self seeking intelligent rebellion, The Division Bell’s “High Hopes” speaks with equal profundity to my fifty-two year old self, seeking intelligent piety.And while Roger Waters continues to mix it up politically, particularly on the Israel-Palestine issue, Gilmour has slid into his role as the elder statesman of the rock world. But the lessons they left from those earlier years—The Wall, Animals, and Dark Side—are still around today, in brilliant remastered glory, for a generation that faces its own Orwellian threats.
There’s some wonderful stuff to be found in the new Later Years box set, as I mentioned recently in my own review.