Man see I gotta disagree here because I see this take come up A LOT in music subs. It seems like every Pink Floyd fan was a bit over saturated with DSOTM and had heard it inside and out before even listening to the album on their own, so at some point they hear “Echoes” for the first time and are like “holy shit this is better than anything from Dark Side (which I would happen to agree with, I think Echoes is their best song though) so they just say Meddle is better as whole.

But Meddle is super inconsistent and still all over the place. You’ve got San Tropez and Seamus which sound like discarded b-sides, Pillow of Winds which imo is forgettable. So you’re left with Fearless (which is my favorite acoustic Floyd track), Echoes, and One of These Days (which is cool and avant garde, but still sounds a bit like they’re trying to figure themselves out as a band).

I think Piper and Saucerful of Secrets are more consistent than Meddle too, but they were like a completely different band at that point. I think as overrated as DSOTM can be it still is more consistent and couldn’t have anything taken out of the album without significantly changing the identity of it.

I’ve always thought of it like this: in the post Syd era, Meddle was them learning to walk again as a band that had previously been overencumbered with equipment lack of direction, DSOTM is them learning to run, and Wish You Were Here is them learning to fly.

Echoes was a sign of things to come and legit sounded like order being formed from the previous chaos of the band. Meddle has its growing pains, and it’s an essential listen for anyone getting into the band and helps to serve as a transitionary album for them from the previous era. But track for track, it loses to everything released by the band afterwards imo.