Healing tones for a healing song

In the autumn of 2019, I had a healing experience.

I don't know why I chose Pink Floyd's The Division Bell (1994), of all albums, to listen to during a long journey to a conference.  But I did.  Meanwhile, at one point while waiting for a bus, I got what felt like my 10000th glimpse of a young couple being, well, carefree and coupley.  Unbearable pangs of envious longing caused by this sort of thing had felt like a curse on my very existence since the events described in "Look and See" - this was also my starting point for the Chronicles iteration of "Them".  In this instance, though, the usual horrible feeling of inferiority simply did not happen!  This also happened to coincide with the brilliantly executed cross-fade of "Take It Back" into "Coming Back to Life"; the sublimely beautiful guitar intro to the latter song thus became the first music I heard as a free person.

I've always seen this as one face, not two.

Thus, even if it's admittedly not to everyone's taste, the achingly pure and sweet guitar tone on "Coming Back to Life" seemed an appropriate choice for the more tender moments of "Escapade" - itself a song about leaving despair behind.  These moments would be, roughly speaking, the beginning and end of the track.  Contrasting this, we have a pair of dramatic, distorted rock solos encasing the "After the Party" interpolation.  As I write this, I'm laughing a bit at the jarring contrast between that tone and the tinny MIDI clarinet that's a placeholder for the vocals!