THE FINAL CUT

The most miserable of all Floyd's albums. 'The Wall' sounds like a picnic by the seaside compared to this. Here it's pretty much Roger Waters by himself at the helm, happily guiding the Pink ship kamikaze style into to the heart of the sun... with no possible point of return.

The good news is that the lyrics are the best he ever put down on paper. In particular 'When the Tigers Broke Free'. That's Tiger Panzers - not the stripey animals!

It's heavy going throughout, but sounds straight from the heart and honest. There's not so much Dave Gilmour on this recording, as he'd had just about had enough of Roger by this point. Rick Wright was already sacked and Nick Mason does what Nick Mason always did - played solid but unspectacular drums. 'The Final Cut' was clearly a band imploding - and it sounds like it.

Why the 5 stars then?

God knows... It must be the intensity that's felt throughout. Being British helps, with the catastrophic decline of shipbuilding and, in particular, the Falklands fiasco in 1982. A stupid, almost pointless conflict by any account. Why not just say to General Galtieri - give us 20 years. After the next generation we'll leave. It's yours... have it! Problem solved. It's a crumby windswept lump of rock at the bottom of the Atlantic anyway.

'Not Now John' sums up the UK very well in the early 80's - replete with continual expletives which must have had DJ's praying that they'd put on the listener friendly 7" version for radio exposure. This is the only uplifting part of the record which is guaranteed to have Floyd fans singing at the tops of there voices.

There's also lots of sound effects, which I'm always a big sucker for, particularly the pub scene in 'Paranoid Eyes'. which has lots of clinking beer mugs and mumbling patrons.

'The Final Cut' is a beautiful, poetic album, lyric heavy and not a happy listen at all. Where it gains most points is in the fact that this Floyd album actually means something, unlike the self pity in 'The Wall'.

There's a disgust at Maggie Thatcher, the British Conservatives and the way in which they conducted overseas policies during the turmoil of early eighties in Britain.

Oh well, at least SHE cleared our National Debt. Now Britain is gazing into a financial black hole in space! Baahh!