Pink Floyd - Final Cut
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CD Details
Artist: Pink FloydEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 2004-05-04
Music Label: Capitol
Product features:
- PINK FLOYD THE FINAL CUT
- The Post War Dream
- Your Possible Pasts
- One Of The Few
- When The Tigers Broke Free
- The Hero's Return
- The Gunner's Dream
- Paranoid Eyes
- Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert
- The Fletcher Memorial Home
- Southampton Dock
- The Final Cut
- Not Now John
- Two Suns In The Sunset
Music reviews of Final Cut
Music Review: Singular and revealing, both of Waters and yourself
Rating: 5 Stars
The Final Cut is one of those works that reveals as much about the listener as the composer.
The album is first and foremost an intellectual and emotional journey full of angst, fear, sarcasm, and despair, and how one reacts to it is based more on one's internal makeup than one's musical ear.
The album's songs are intense and laconic, and framed by an elegant but sparse musical structure that relies more on subtle details than lush melodies to communicate the eccentric concept at the heart of the album - that the dreams of peace and tranquility people had after the end of WWII have been torn apart by the continuing greed, ambition and paranoia of world leaders.
Waters feels a sense of personal betrayal at the fraying of what he calls "the post-war dream" because he father died creating it by fighting in WWII, the war meant to end all wars. So this is a very intimate album in the Leonard Cohen style, and one that makes unapologetic and unnervingly frank revelations of the Waters' personal and political life.
Some people say that with the other members of Pink Floyd relegated to being sessions musicians on this album, there was no one to foil sone of Waters' more eclectic tastes when The Final Cut was recorded. But I think the absence of the others, who lack Waters' inner drive and vision, allowed Waters to create a truly distinctive work that will stand alone in the annals of rock (with perhaps only his solo album, the Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking, for company).
That Waters sewed The Final Cut together with songs left over from The Wall speaks to how creative (but troubled) he was between 1978, when he began working on The Wall and Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking, and 1983, when The Final Cut was released. For example, album was initially named The Final Cut, as in the final version of an edit, because it was meant to contain new music written by Waters for the 1982 film version of The Wall. But as the albums concept grew, Waters deftly transformed that title to refer to a failed suicide attempt by the central protagonist in his concept, as also to the idea that the 1982 Falklands war was the final cut, as in fatal stab, into the heart of the post-war dream.
The Final Cut's delicate music and literate lyrics will disappoint space rockers longing for the sonic landscapes of Wish You Were Here or the edgy menace of Animals. Waters' oblique references to people such as war poet Rupert Brooke, and some of the imagery he conjures might also be lost on more than a few listeners. For example, the touching song Southampton Dock loses much of its meaning if you don't realize that's the place from where the British navy departed to fight the Falklands war in 1982.
True, elements like that can make The Final Cut seem pompous, and at first listen the album sounds stilted and lacking in melody. But no piece of music can be everything and the genuine artist chooses his place, his style, and his message, and embraces them unapologetically. For example, an exquisite padded leather chair cannot be rustic at the same time.
The beauty of this album is that Waters doesn't try to do everything for everybody. He takes a stand. If The Final Cut sounds pompous it's because Waters feels he has a right to comment on the human condition and the price leaders make unwitting citizens pay in the pursuit of greatness and power. If the album sounds stilted it's the album's song-cycle aren't designed to give listeners a comfortable, predicable ride. Instead, the album shifts dynamics sharply between a fiery intensity and a wounded melancholy, initially alienating all but the dedicated listener. And if The Final Cut sounds unmelodic, well, melody has never been Waters' forte. But someone once said that music is the space between the notes, and the Final Cut illustrates this perfectly with its subtle musical texture that is the musical equivalent of blank verse.
Though David Gilmour said he couldn't abide the The Final Cut, probably because his own musical tastes are more conventional and the shabby way Waters treated him and the others Floyd members during the time the album was made, he did contribute some indelible guitar work to it. Gilmour's few but moving guitar solos perfectly complement the searing emotions that tumble out of Waters throughout the album. Nick Mason's under-stated behind-the-beat drumming is perfect for deliberate pace at which the Final Cut moves, and even though Rick Wright does not play on the album his absence haunts this tremulous and unsettling work (though only die-hard Floyd fans might feel that!).
Waters, and co-producers James Guthrie and Michael Kamen, who conducts the National Philharmonic Orchestra for the album and who also adds some elegant piano work to it, also extract some stellar performances from the backup musicians. The overall sound of the album, particularly on the recently issued re-master, is also superb.
For the fullest experience The Final Cut needs to be heard with full concentration, lyrics in hand. And it takes many listens to understand and appreciate the album. But if you perceive you will be rewarded with a rare nugget of music that will exhilarate and enrapture, and in the end reveal something of yourself to you.
Description of Final Cut
PINK FLOYD THE FINAL CUTClassic Rock CDs
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