Best Pink Floyd Album

[TigerInATrance]

I chose The Division Bell. It's a brilliant statement. Beyond that, it's just such a great sounding recording. There's stuff on there that pulls from the entire catalog of Floyd. I've always got to listen all the way through, and I can't say that about any other Floyd record, even DSOTM. The other thing here is that,while I feel like I could be great friends with Roger Waters, I do not like much of what he's got going on musically.

 

[Troph]

Growing up I adored Roger Waters. But over the years, I have soured on him. Pink Floyd was at their peak when Waters was just a contributor like the rest of the band, and not a total control freak.

Here's my take on Roger and Dave:

The ambitious Roger was a good experimental musician, a good lyricist, and a decent melody writer. But he wasn't much of a bass player or vocalist.

The easygoing Gilmour was a good fundamental musician, a decent melody writer, a good vocalist, and an excellent guitar player (and not a bad bass player either judging by his work on "Pigs"). But he was a poor lyricist.

They complemented each other well. The best Pink Floyd albums, in my opinion, are combination efforts where these two worked together to fill in the rough edges from the other, and got occasional contributions from Rick and Nick. This coordination peaked on Dark Side and Wish You Were here, and fell apart on The Wall, which was too unbalanced towards Waters. The Final Cut can hardly even be called a Pink Floyd album.

 

[DeliriumTremens]

I'll take the live version of The Wall

 

[nutso42]

How I view their big four albums:

Dark Side of the Moon - The most revolutionary of all their albums, and the most experimentative (particularly by their use of the studio)
Wish You Were Here - Simply going by quality of every aspect, their best
Animals - Best by the standards of a progressive rock fan, impressive musicianship all the way through (and my favorite)
The Wall - Somewhat more musically simplistic, but as far as the songwriting goes, the most complex concept expressed

 

[etherealme]

Wish You Were Here

Reasons:
They were all still on relatively good terms like brothers still and the sentiment that they were still a band is still very much intact.

The emotions coming from Roger and David especially, but from the whole band come through in the performances of the music and the theme; vocal performances especially were very palpable due to the ghostly meeting of Syd at the studio and their reactions to his state.

Likely contains the best of Gilmour's guitar licks and tones.

Wish You Were Here as a track - beyond compare.

Long form song format with repeated thematic pieces creates a whole album experience not just a collection of songs.

I am very very partial to Animals as well and it's a tight second; believe it or not Waters is my favorite vocalist so it's not the singing here. Gilmour is just not fully engaged in the process of making Animals. I love The Wall and it is essential Floyd but it's third for me followed by Dark Side or vice versa depending on mood. In hindsight, probably more even as I think a better album overall is one with concept, lyrically solid rather than experimental.
So either
WYWH > Animals > The Wall > DSotM
WYWH > Animals > DSotM > The Wall

 

[P. Aaron]

Wish You Were Here I personally think is the most listenable and lacks the heavy-trips of other Pink Floyd LP’s post Dark Side.

I find it the most playable from start to finish.