WITH impossible hype to live up to, Pink Floyd’s swansong can never hope to receive an impartial hearing. Diehard fans are gushing over it, or accusing David Gilmour and Nick Mason of releasing a cash cow.

Those with a passing interest dismiss the album as a collection of leftovers, while others are befuddled that a once mighty leviathan waited 20 years to say goodbye.

They miss the point. The Endless River may be born from 1994’s Division Bell sessions, but there are new guitar and drum parts, together with 21st-century studio technology. This alone is enough to make it relevant.

Then there is the sheer joy of again being able to hear Pink Floyd music for the first time; some of it as good as anything they’ve ever produced.

The feel is more from the Meddle period, with Gilmour and Mason in awesome form. And not since Live at Pompeii have the pair sounded freer – wilder even. It’s ironic that a group which became so polished should bow out with such free-wheeling psychedelia.

Floyd first attempted to bid farewell three decades ago with the acrimoniously recorded Final Cut, but it was Rick Wright’s death that sparked this project. The band’s treatment of Wright is one of its many festering wounds and this album is clearly intended to be a closing, healing chapter. As the cathartic closing track tells us: “The sum of our parts, the beat of our hearts, is louder than words.”

With vicious spats tainting Pink Floyd’s career, this sentiment alone makes The Endless River an appropriate way to call it a day.