Published on Jul 22, 2005
On the heels of the phenomenon that is
The Wall, Pink Floyd released their most controversial, and
for many fans the most inaccessible album of their careers. One
thing that has to be considered about the band at this juncture is
that at this point the two de-facto leaders, Roger Waters and David
Gilmour, had fallen apart for both artistic and business reasons.
Following this album Waters would leave the band for good.
Essentially,
The Final Cut is a Roger Waters album. Gilmour plays, as
does original member Nick Mason, though minimally and augmented by
a number of outside musicians. Rick Wright, also an original
member, does not appear on the album and had been fired from the
band, or left, depending on whom you talk to.
Big chunks of the album use minimal arrangement, in some cases
just a solo piano. In other places the sound is extremely thick and
drenched with atmosphere and mood. Waters’ flair for coloring his
compositions with voices and odd sound clips is used extensively.
The rich sonic textures you’d come to expect from The Floyd are
here, but in a much different fashion than previous albums. The
majority of the album consists of either minimalist arrangements or
lush orchestrations provided by the full London Philharmonic
conducted by the legendary Michael Kaman. In fact, the orchestrated
parts make up a huge part of the album, and it works. The dense
layers of orchestral sound create a dark ambience that is unlike
any other Floyd record, but fits in perfectly with Water’s often
heavy-handed compositions.
If people were expecting more of what they got on
The Wall, or any other previous Floyd album, they were in
for a surprise.
The Final Cut is a somber affair; completely devoid of any
bright moments and with no groove whatsoever to be found — without
question, the most radio-unfriendly album of their career. No big
stretch for Floyd really, almost every thing they did was dark, if
not downright depressing, and they certainly never cared about
singles. The thematic elements need to be dark anyway, for the
subject of the album is abut as dark as it gets. A concept album
about the futility and aftermath of war. This is not new territory
for Waters, as he has covered it many times before, from “Corporal
Clegg” off
A Saucerful Of Secrets to a good chunk of
The Wall, it’s been an obsession of Waters’ his entire
life.
In this case, he gives in and creates and entire album about it,
spanning the length of his own life in the telling. He has a much
more mature voice by this time, at times making
The Wall seem a bit juvenile. And as far as concepts go,
this is by far his most structured and cohesive work, outshining
even
Dark Side Of The Moon in that respect. Partly personal
reflection, and part the voices of others, Waters’ narrators jump
from child to old veteran, to post-war teen, to war widow, blurring
the lines between whose particular recollections we’re experiencing
at the time. Waters’ story covers WWII, the event with the greatest
impact and effect on the last three generations, through the Cold
War and Viet Nam, to the comparatively paltry affairs in Grenada
which were just a blip on the radar of the collective consciousness
of most of the world.
Though as different sounding as can you can imagine, coming from
the same source,
The Final Cut certainly dovetails with
The Wall, at least in the personal recollection of Waters’
youth and the death of his father at Anzio in WWII. It also
incorporates elements of
The Wall that were left out of the album for one reason or
another, mainly the excellent song “When The Tigers Broke Free,”
which was sadly cut from
The Wall but appears in the film version, and was included
in the re-mastered reissue of
The Final Cut. The only real rocker in this set, “Not Now
John,” is a clone of the extended “Empty Spaces” also recorded for
The Wall film but left off the original album. Another link
to
The Wall is the song “Southampton Dock”: “They disembarked
in ’45 / And no-one spoke and no-one smiled / There were too many
spaces in the line”; which reflects “Bring The Boys Back Home” from
The Wall where young Pink searches in vain for his father
among groups of returning soldiers.
Water’s compositions waver up and down the emotional scale, from
quite reflection to intense anger, sometimes with startling
abruptness. The melancholy quality of “The Gunner’s Dream” is so
plaintive (and so futilely hopeful); it’s hard to believe this is
the same voice of “The Fletcher Memorial Home” who suggests that
the answer to world peace is to have all the world’s leaders
gassed.
Part of the appeal of
The Final Cut is the contrast between this album and any
other by Floyd. Secondly, the rich lyrical content leaves a lot of
territory to be explored. Subsequent listens to this album reveal
more and more layers of complexity and depth. Personally I find it
a fascinating and richly detailed look into Waters’ dark psyche,
albeit a bit emotionally exhausting.
After all the ups and downs, the album closes with the quiet”Two
Suns In The Sunset,” which pulls together what really is the crux
of the album, the culmination of all the wars of the past and our
current volatile global situation, the thing Waters fears more than
his own losses or damaged psyche, the impending threat of nuclear
holocaust:
“The wire that holds the cork That keeps the anger in Gives way
And suddenly it’s day again. The sun is in the east Even though the
day is done Two suns in the sunset”
[Authors note: This review covers the 2004 reissue of the album
which this writer feels is far superior to the original release,
partly because of the inclusion of the excellent track “When The
Tigers Broke Free” which tells the back story of the death of
Waters’ father. It was included in the film version of The Wall
but appears here for the first time on a studio album.
-BR]