Rick Wright's Wet Dream (1978): Jazz-Fusion Flop or Overlooked Gem?

When Pink Floyd’s keyboardist Rick Wright dropped Wet Dream in 1978, the timing was terrible – Floyd was imploding and the record came out just as punk and new wave were making jazz-fusion feel passé. Critics mostly shrugged. NME called it “tasteful but dull,” and Rolling Stone wrote that Wright “sounds like he’s making a solo album to avoid making a solo album.” The jazz-fusion sound – full of saxophone solos and breezy Rhodes piano – was labeled a limp echo of the laid-back side of Floyd rather than a bold statement.

Decades later, Wet Dream has gotten a modest posthumous re-evaluation. Fans digging into Floyd’s periphery now appreciate it as a warm, cohesive mood piece – less ambitious than The Endless River but more personal. The 2019 reissue helped; it included Against the Odds, a track that shows Wright’s melodic touch. Still, no one argues it’s a lost masterpiece. It’s a quiet, slightly sad curiosity – exactly the kind of record a guy would make while his band was falling apart and no one was really listening.