It is the first extract from the new album ‘Luck and Strange’. “They’ll sell you things you don’t need,” sings the musician in a song about not selling your soul and resisting the myths of fame and success. Richard Wright is on keyboards and organ. And yes, there is the final solo
by Rolling Stone
David Gilmour has published the first excerpt from Luck and Strangethe album that will be released on September 6th and which is the musician’s first unreleased album since Rattle and Lock of 2015.
The piece is titled The Piper’s Callis produced like the whole album with Charlie Andrew and has lyrics written as usual by the musician’s wife, the writer Polly Samson.
On backing vocals in the song there is the daughter of the guitarist Romany Gilmour, on keyboards and organ there is Richard Wright in a recording with Gilmour from 2007, the so-called Barn Jams. The video will be released tomorrow.
“The road to hell is paved with gold, they’ll sell you things you don’t need,” sings Gilmour in a lyric that seems to address the emptiness of the pursuit of fame and money, with the rigor of the piper who sells you fakes mild and anesthetizes from pain. “But you will reap what you sow,” warns Gilmour, “as I discovered long ago. The promise of eternal youth, the spoils of fame, a carpe diem attitude.”
«Luck and Strange faces life by focusing on aging”, explained Samson, “the theme of mortality is a constant. Working with Charlie Andrew was liberating, he wants to know what the songs are about and he wants everyone who plays them to have clear ideas about the lyrics and that their way of playing depends on them. I particularly loved it for this reason.”
“Polly and I have been writing together for over thirty years,” Gilmour said. «The Von Trapped live streams showcased the fantastic fusion between Romany’s voice and the harp sound. This led us to feel able to discard part of the past that I was tied to and to be able to eliminate any rules to do whatever I felt like doing. It was a great joy.”
In addition to Gimour and Romany, the album features Guy Pratt and Tom Herbert (bass), Adam Betts, Steve Gadd and Steve DiStanislao (drums), Rob Gentry and Roger Eno (keyboards), Will Gardner (string and choir arrangements).
