Pink Floyd: Music From the Film More ("Why Pink Floyd?" Reissue)

To follow up A Saucerful of Secrets, Pink Floyd recorded a soundtrack to the first film by Barbet Schroeder, 1969’s More, about recent university grads hitchhiking through Europe and experimenting with heroin. It’s essentially a picaresque, which suits the band surprisingly well: While Pink Floyd isn’t the most grounded band, this soundtrack makes for a good road-trip mixtape, as the shifts in style suggest new locales and the headlong instrumentals evoke the forward momentum of travel. There’s a greater emphasis on acoustic folk tunes like “Cirrus Minor” and “Cymbaline,” although instrumentals like “Main Theme” and “More Blues” are by this point in their career beginning to sound redundant.

Still, More might sound better with, well, more. These reissues are all incredibly stingy with bonus materials, boasting only upgraded packaging and a new remaster that improves only minimally on the 1990s master. While that may preserve the original album sequencing, it makes this particular reissue sound like a missed opportunity. Several of these songs appeared in the film in slightly altered versions, and there were two songs that didn’t make the final soundtrack. Including those tracks and subsequent live performances might have diminished the scattershot quality of More and given some important insight into Pink Floyd’s creative process. Rather than rehabbing or recontextualizing the band’s third album, this edition simply lets it flail.

Pink Floyd: Music From the Film More (“Why Pink Floyd?” Reissue)