Pink Floyd have officially unveiled the first full track off their fifteenth and final studio album, The Endless River. “Louder than Words”, featuring a composition by guitarist David Gilmour and lyrics by Gilmour’s wife, Polly Samson, was premiered on Chris Evans‘s BBC Radio 2 show on Friday morning. It is the only track on the mostly instrumental album to feature lyrics, with the song serving as a testament to the band’s career and a tribute to the late Richard Wright, the band’s former keyboardist and founding member, who passed away in 2008.
David Gilmour spoke about the song and Wright’s contribution to the band with BBC 6 Music’s Matt Everitt, stating, “Well, Rick is gone. This is the last thing that’ll be out from us. I’m pretty certain there will not be any follow up to this. And Polly, my wife, thought that would be a very good lyrical idea to go out on. A way of describing the symbiosis that we have. Or had… I didn’t necessarily always give [Wright] his proper due. People have very different attitudes to the way they work and we can become very judgmental and think someone is not quite pulling his weight enough, without realising that theirs is a different weight to pull.”
“Louder than Words” will be released to Mainstream rock radio in the United States on October 14, serving as the first release in promotion of the album. It is uncertain whether or not the track will be released as a single on digital and/or physical formats before The Endless River releases worldwide on November 7 and in the United Kingdom on November 10. You can listen to the brand new track and Matt Everitt’s interview with Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour and Nick Mason here.
