THE FINAL CUT

Writing tons of songs for The Wall that were eventually left off, Waters decided to make them the foundation for the next Floyd album dedicated to his slain Father who died in the war, and which became their last album. The title is a double (triple?) entendre of sorts, meant to invoke the betrayal of not only the war vets and the values they supposedly fought for (via a number of things, but particularly through Waters critique of the Falklands war), but also the cuts to the welfare state that Thatcher had been implementing, and of course it ended up being the final 'cut' of a Floyd album. Or at least of the Floyd as we knew them, with Waters. The album is really good, of course, but not quite on the same level as The Wall, or even Waters' solo follow-up The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking, in terms of musicality and production. Part of the reason for this is that this album contains outtakes from The Wall. But I think also that unlike The Wall in which Waters allowed for Bob Ezrin, James Guthrie, and even David Gilmour input into the how it developed and its final form, Waters saw The Final Cut as his, a more personal goal that he alone needed to accomplish. So, he didn't give the rest of the Floyd much input (and had already fired Rick Wright from the band during the Wall recording, so he wasn't even around for this). So, in many ways, this is the first Roger Waters solo album, but with the remaining Floyd members as players (and even then, he brought in Andy Ward to play drums on the last track!). Like all Floyd concept albums and Waters' later albums, it is very political. There are many great songs here, including "Your Possible Pasts", "Gunner's Dream", "Two Suns in the Sunset" and "Not Now John". The latter has a classic guitar Floydian solo from Gilmour. The Floyd were apparently, at least for a short time, supposed to tour this album, before the band fell apart and Waters decided to go solo. But despite its positives, there is a lingering feeling on it, related directly to Waters obsession, of a slight mean-spiritedness that taints the album. It doesn't have a 'feel good' vibe. You can kindof tell that Waters had to have it his way. But it is still better than 95 percent of recorded music. I give this album 8.2 out of 10 on my 10-point scale, which translates to low-ish 4 PA stars.

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