I'M 100 PERCENT HAPPY WITH THE WORK I'VE DONE WITH PINK FLOYD. BUT...'MY FOCUS IS DIFFERENT RIGHT NOW'

Leading a rock group and being a solo artist were "not what I asked for," David Gilmour says. For Luck and Strange, he assembled a team that shared the weight of his creative efforts. The result? "The best album I've made since The Dark Side of the Moon."

- GARY GRAFF

PROLIFIC IS NOT the word we use to describe David Gilmour, at least not when it comes to putting out music. His new album, Luck and Strange (Sony), comes nearly nine years after its predecessor, Rattle That Lock, which likewise ended a nine-year wait (although to be fair, he’d been working on the posthumous Pink Floyd set The Endless River, which came out the year before). Gilmour’s never been one to crank ’em out, of course, and since Floyd’s final tour, in 1994, he’s given us just three studio sets.

“I don’t have a huge ambition any more,” Gilmour, now 78, told us during the Rattle That Lock campaign. “In past years there was a lot of thinking about the career and wanting to achieve success. It’s sort of turned into something more calm and less ambitious in my later years. I’ll get round to doing something again before too long, I hope, but I have no idea. I haven’t planned anything.”

Fair enough, but we’d like to disagree with the “less ambitious” part. When Gilmour does put something out, it is the product of great ambition and invention, and of a good deal of work that’s gone on even before he and his team of choice get into the studio. It perhaps hasn’t produced a substantial amount of music over the years, but it’s always resulted in work that’s vital and compelling, something new and interesting each time.

Luck and Strange is simply the latest case in point. It’s Gilmour’s fifth studio album overall. His first, a self-titled affair, came out in May 1978 while Pink Floyd were on a break prior to making The Wall, with Gilmour producing and leading a core trio that included bassist Rick Wills and drummer Willie Wilson from his pre-Floyd band, Jokers Wild. About Face followed in 1984, helmed by Gilmour with