Pickin' On Pink Floyd: A Bluegrass Tribute

Album Review

Pickin' on Pink Floyd is another in a long series of bluegrass tributes dedicated to popular rock and country musicians. On this, the players try and translate the atmospheric space rock of Pink Floyd into a bluegrass sound. Although this makes for a very interesting listen, somewhere along the line it becomes apparent that despite the fact that it is audibly pleasing, it never really quite clicks. Some of the renditions are frightening in terms of how well Pink Floyd can actually translate to bluegrass. Especially impressive are "Time," which becomes quite the hootenanny in the hands of these players, and "Run Like Hell," which retains much of the original tension and comes the closest to blending the two genres. But elsewhere the music tends to move too far away from the original song, leaving the listener with some real impressive bluegrass playing that no longer has basis in the familiar. This may be fine for bluegrass purists (who probably will not like this album anyway, for obvious reasons), but may leave behind the Pink Floyd fans who might otherwise find this album pretty listenable. This is not a bad album by any means, but it tends to wander too much and will probably alienate many fans of both the band and the genre.