David Gilmour Kicks Off New York Run With High Hopes, Higher Guitar Solos

All it takes is one guitar note piercing through a pitch-black arena — one note dramatically reaching heavenward, as if it’s waking up — to recognize the guitarist. As soon as David Gilmour struck the introductory high E of “5 A.M.,” with only a soft red light and some even softer synths accompanying him, the packed audience at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on Monday cheered. The lights slowly faded in, Gilmour’s famous slouch came into focus, and all of the weepy notes he could coax from his instrument found their own spotlight and applause for the next two hours.

The concert was a powerhouse of moody songs rich with Gilmour’s emotive playing. Gilmour weighted the set list heavily toward his newest material — he performed every track on his recent Luck and Strange album, though not front to back, and three off his last, Rattle That Lock — as if to show that his legacy with Pink Floyd does not define his artistry, much in the same way that he carried on with Pink Floyd in the Eighties and Nineties in an effort to show that his former collaborator, Roger Waters, did not define Pink Floyd.

The evening’s two sets contained only a handful of Seventies Floyd songs — “Time,” “Wish You Were Here,” “Fat Old Sun,” and of course “Comfortably Numb,” among others — but in the context of Gilmour’s newer material, which dwells on the darkest side of the moon, the selections fit his current outlook. Where Pink Floyd’s Seventies oeuvre obsessed on the brutality of the human condition, Gilmour’s latest solo music concerns itself with humanity’s fragility.

Luck and Strange, specifically, found the artist, who is 78, staring into a sunset. When he announced the album, his cowriter and wife, Polly Samson — a journalist and novelist whom Gilmour has collaborated with since the tail end of Pink Floyd — stated that she wrote the bulk of the album’s lyrics “from the point of view of being older” when “mortality is the constant.” The band’s bassist, Guy Pratt, who introduced the show with a polite request for concertgoers to turn the flashlights off on their phones when filming video, even called the gig “a once-in-a-lifetime thing.” Although Gilmour has not proclaimed that this short tour will be his last, he recently told Rolling Stone that “it could be, obviously.”

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The audience at Madison Square Garden treated the show accordingly as a special event. The performance was the first of five nights at the fabled venue, following stints in Rome, London, and Los Angeles. Gilmour has announced no further tour dates, and the thousands of lucky strangers in the arena seemed content simply to smoke their weed, lean back in their seats, and absorb the sound. They even obeyed Pratt’s request and, for once, most of the light in MSG came from the rainbow array of lasers beaming out from the stage rather than the audience.

In the grand tradition of Pink Floyd, a round screen hovered above the stage for film reels and closeups of musicians. The band was often obscured by clouds of smoke, and stark, colorful lighting. But unlike Pink Floyd, Gilmour remained the center of attention for most of the night.

Although he’s never been a ham (most of the stage banter was thank yous and recognizing the musicians and crew), Gilmour’s charisma shined during the songs. The most recent material in the set list requires a certain conviction and belief in it for it to come across properly. On “A Single Spark,” he sings, “Isn’t it true that that [life]’s all through in a single spark between two eternities,” and the song “Scattered” ends with a complaint: “Time is a tide that disobeys, and it disobeys me/It never ends.” These are no small musings; they’re the sort of Big Lightbulbs that could keep people awake at night when they’re not worried about the world going to hell. But there’s something about Gilmour’s deep voice, an inherent profundity, that has always been able to sell despair as a pop song. (How else would you explain the appeal of “Time”?)

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For one song, the honor of singing about hopelessness went to another Gilmour, David’s daughter Romany, who played harp and sang lead on “Between Two Points.” The tune is a cover of an arcane dream-pop missive by an even more arcane group, the Montgolfier Brothers, and its lyrics read like a sarcastic advice column: “Just let them walk all over you … Let the life-blood drain away from you/They’re right, you’re wrong.” But she sang it beautifully and laconically in her round alto voice, staring off at the back of the arena, clearly acting the role. (The 22-year-old contrasted the performance later by headbanging her whole body to the guitar solo in “Comfortably Numb.”)

For as bleak as some of the material reads as poetry, however, the performances never felt dour. A performance of the wordless vocal showcase “The Great Gig in the Sky,” sung by Romany and three backup singers, felt oddly gentle when compared to the original Dark Side of the Moon version, which singer Clare Torry screamed in bloody terror, or even the soulful rendition of Gilmour’s last tour, heard best on his Live at Pompeii album. Each woman at Madison Square Garden took turns, almost treating the song like a lullaby, a different gig for a different sky. In the context of the concert and the rest of the morose material, it worked.

Gilmour livened things up anytime he played a guitar solo. Smooth, lyrical lead breaks are his signature, and whether he stuck to the script with well-known solos (the soaring steel guitar of “High Hopes,” the hum-along acoustics of “Wish You Were Here”) or ventured off with the arena-shaking “Fat Old Sun,” there’s never any doubt who’s playing. Even lesser known Pink Floyd songs like “A Great Day for Freedom,” off 1994’s The Division Bell, and “Sorrow,” off 1987’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason, got standing ovations.

There was also an element of escapism at the concert, which took place on the evening before Election Day. Only one song, “In Any Tongue,” seemed to speak to politics, or rather humanism, in a general sense (“I hear ‘Mama’ sounds the same in any tongue,” Gilmour sings). The typically taciturn Gilmour didn’t address or endorse any presidential nominees. It was nice to get a break.

The night ended with a typically stunning, nine-minute rendition of “Comfortably Numb” for the encore. Gilmour’s guitar moaned and keened during the song’s concluding section, and he pursed his lips as he bent the strings to find the right notes. On his last solo tour, he played more Pink Floyd songs (and any Floyd fan could list dozens of additional songs they’d want to hear), but since this set focused more on his solo material, it seemed like he approach the Floyd songs with a freshness the time. When the song was done, he simply smiled and looked satisfied. He said thank you and goodbye, bowing with his bandmates, but he didn’t need to. His guitar had said all he needed to say for the previous two hours.

David Gilmour set list:

Set One:

“5 A.M.”
“Black Cat”
“Luck and Strange”
“Breathe (in the Air)”
“Time”
“Breathe (Reprise)”
“Fat Old Sun”
“Marooned”
“Wish You Were Here”
“Vita Brevis”
“Between Two Points”
“High Hopes”

Set Two:

“Sorrow”
“The Piper’s Call”
“A Great Day for Freedom”
“In Any Tongue”
“The Great Gig in the Sky”
“A Boat Lies Waiting”
“Coming Back to Life”
“Dark and Velvet Nights”
“Sings”
“Scattered”

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Encore:

“Comfortably Numb”