And Also

If pencil hatchings and guitar chords can tell a story, you’ll see and hear it in In Any Tongue. On David Gilmour’s 70th birthday came the release of an official video of this tour de force on the guitarist’s September 2015 album Rattle that Lock. In Any Tongue is a great piece, deep, not as long as many rock ballads, and with Gilmour’s trademark, mel­odic lead kicking in three-­quarters into the song. As the official account goes, the album’s creative director, Aubrey Powell, stumbled onto Confusion Through Sand, an animation video by filmmaker Danny Madden depicting a young soldier in wartime, a work that won recognition at the 2014 SXSW Film Festival. Since Madden’s evocative animation fits the mood of Gilmour’s song on the futility of war, he allowed them to use an edited part of his short film and the die was cast. The result is fantastic: a hazy, walled, labyrinthine combat zone, figures flitting through, hearts pounding, piano interludes, finger on the trigger, Gilmour’s grainy-smooth voc­als, confusions, emotions and the vintage guitar leads breaking free. “No sugar is enough to bring sweetness to his cup, I know sorrow tastes the same on any tongue,” goes the lyric. The music video has been published onl­ine, ahead of Gilmour’s North American tour.