You can get off to a fast start. You can sustain your opener with the main course, not filler. But can you end on a high note? Sometimes I wonder if recording a strong closer is the most difficult thing to pull off when it comes to album rock. When it comes to the cream of the crop in music, I can think of more strong openers than strong closers. Nonetheless, I still have my favorites which I’ll be featuring on Mental Jukebox all month.
Much has been said of Dark Side Of The Moon in its entirety. It’s a prog rock magnum opus that blended elements of soul and rock so ingeniously. Much has also been said about the marquee tracks: “Brain Damage”, “Money”, “Us And Them” and, of course, “Time”. But every individual track on the album – and the sequence in which they appear – are equally important to the power that Dark Side yields. There may not be a better example of this than the closer “Eclipse”.
Thematically and musically, “Eclipse” is right where it needs to be on the album. Lyrically, it’s the closing statement on an album that relies heavily on its concept theme. It would seem to make little sense if it was placed in another track order. This is also the case in terms of its instrumental composition. It has the structure of a coda – the tail end of a musical masterpiece that seems irrelevant without the greatness that preceded it.
“And all that is now, And all that is gone, And all that's to come, And everything under the sun is in tune. But the sun is eclipsed by the moon.”