AMUSED TO DEATH

The best album to come from a ' Floydian/s' since The Wall. This is an essential masterpiece and even Waters says, this, The Wall and Dark Side Of The Moon are like a trilogy in a way and conceptually you may well agree with that. The album starts with the ' Battle Of Bill Hubbard', the moving story of the desperation of trying to save a comrade in the battle lines, the failure of saving him and the having to live with the ' whatever happened to Bill Hubbard?' question for many years. It is very moving and made more so by Jeff Becks brilliant guitar work. The album moves along at a steady pace with the ' Prefect Sense' songs and ' What God Wants' themes. All the time angst, self ridicule and cynicism run deep. The only way Waters knows how!The background theatre between sets is magical. Ways of life portrayed in mere conversations, the sound of a jet flying over a hedgerow...the sound of a hangman's rope going taught on 'Too Much Rope'. Don Henley is on lead vocals on ' Watching TV', the moving story of the world famous live killing of the Chinese student in Tiannamen Square. All this through the portal of TV..get it yet, amused to death? For me the final three songs are what distinguish this masterpiece and set it on such a high pedestal. ' Three Wishes' begins with a South African mother relaying how she gassed her three children to death.The pain of humanity, the cruelty, the torture and torment of so many but thanks to media we are almost numbed by the news items that crash into out living rooms day after day. Musically ' Three Wishes' is stunning and if ever there was an album where Waters returned to the more mainstream Floyd sound then this is it.' It's a Miracle' is very sarcastic in content, again musically very slick. Waters manages some humour here joking how an earthquake managed to cause a piano lid to come down and break Andrew Lloyd Webber's fingers!A farmer from Ohio manages to repay a loan, A Brazilian grew a tree, a Doctor in Manhattan saved a dying man for free....It's a miracle....' Amused to Death' finishes the album off. A nine minute classic, lots of cynicism and sarcasm as usual from Waters but delivered in a very real, poignant and moving way. The album ends with the soldier realizing that upon seeing Bill Hubbard's death certification on a war memorial, how now all his doubts were complete and his mind could be put at rest. Bill Hubbard was at rest. Amused To death is a defiant but beautiful potrayal of mankind and the terrible mess it is in. As always though Roger Waters manages to leave a thread of hope in his works somewhere. An epic work in every sense.