David Gilmour, ‘Luck and Strange’: Album Review

The previous two albums released by David Gilmour – the 2015 solo record Rattle That Lock and Pink Floyd‘s The Endless River, out a year earlier – double as snapshots of the time. Both conceived after the death of original Floyd keyboardist Richard Wright in 2008 (though The Endless River was made up of leftovers from the last Pink Floyd album Wright performed on, 1994’s The Division Bell), the LPs serve as double bookends to an era the singer and guitarist was ready to close.

Scatterings since then – a 2017 live album culled from a 2016 concert, a 2020 single and a one-off Floyd reunion song with drummer Nick Mason in 2022 in support of Ukraine’s effort against the Russian invasion – have moved away from the predominantly meditative work that peaked with the mostly instrumental Endless River. But with his fifth solo album, Luck and Strange, Gilmour returns to a thoughtful and occasional melancholy stage, undoubtedly spurred by the events of the past several years, especially the pandemic.

That 2020 song, “Yes, I Have Ghosts,” is a bonus track on deluxe editions of Luck and Strange and underlines the album’s musical and thematic center. Cowritten with wife Polly Samson and featuring vocals by daughter Romany Gilmour, both of whom contribute throughout the LP, it’s a summoning of spirits from the past. But with the aid of Alt-J producer Charlie Andrew, who pushed Gilmour to try something new, Luck and Strange often draws the singer and guitarist away from fixed expectations.

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That doesn’t mean Pink Floyd has been entirely wiped from the album; Gilmour’s powerful and flowing solos in “The Piper’s Call” and the seven-and-a-half-minute closing song “Scattered” can’t help but recall celebrated moments from the band’s catalog. Neither can the slippery “Dark and Velvet Nights.” But the emphasis here is on coming to terms with aging and mortality (see: “A Single Spark”), which are persistent reminders that have been even more nagging since the pandemic. As Gilmour sings on the bluesy title track, “In the light before the dawn, shadows snake in my peripheral.”

The 90-second instrumental intro “Black Cat” is the gateway to Luck and Strange and, with its softly stinging guitar and delicate piano, a preemptive nudge signaling Gilmour’s steps into somewhat unfamiliar territory (“A Single Spark” again). “Between Points,” a cover of a 1999 song by British dream-pop duo the Montgolfier Brothers sung by Romany, is the album’s biggest left turn, though it shares a thread with Pink Floyd’s more anodyne recordings. Through it all Gilmour sounds in fine voice, its still-rich warmness driving home the poignancy of many of the songs; his luminous guitar is even better, averting a total break from the past. If Luck and Strange suggests Gilmour’s future, it will be a bright one, even in the darkness.