In a word - superb. Quite how they manage to keep on excelling themselves year on year is a mystery to me, but they do.
I took a colleague along who had never seen them before, but is a massive Floyd and general prog rock fan. The verdict? 'The best 30 quid I've ever spent'. I think they might just be going see to them again!
Set list has already been mentioned, but personally I think this years is one of the most eclectic I have heard yet, but I still really enjoyed it. In my opinion, everything hangs together really well. However, I do think the nature of the set works both for and against the band. The converted are 'hmmmm, wonder what they will make of this song' and generally really enjoy the mix of well known and less well known songs, whereas the casual fan is more along the line of 'ummm, don't recognise this as Floyd, I'm off for a(nother) beer', which might account for the increasingly distracting levels of movement throughout the show which now seems to affect most venues. A symptom of the increasing popularity of the band I'm afraid and something I think we may just have to get used to.
Negatives: A rather small crowd for the size of the venue - come on Nottingham, they are only one of the best touring bands around at the moment! I guess one reason might be that it was a 'school night', but even so....
Others have already been mentioned in other posts.
Positives: The lightshow was as excellent as ever perhaps even more so, as was the general musicianship. I particularly enjoyed Ian's theatrics during Comfy and Run, as I missed out on that bit of last year's Wall tour (I went to one of gigs post-licencing problems - damn!) Although I too don't like to single anyone out, I do think that Damian needs special mention. I think this gig was the best I have ever heard him. The crowd, although small, was vocal in all the right places.
Just one observation: I thought that they were a bit pushed for time at the end of the second set, and I seemed to me that the second solo in Comfy was truncated by a few bars just before the 'mirror ball bit'. The lighting seemed to be being cycled through some of the changes rather quickly, and the solo didn't seem to be as long as I remember it previously. Did anyone else notice this, or is just the case that Anno Domini is catching up with me? Didn't affect my enjoyment of the show, though!
