THE FINAL CUT

The "Final Cut" is the last album where both Roger Waters and David Gilmour work together. Rick Wright has already left: as rare keyboards, only piano, Hammond organ and harmonium are present. Anyway, the omnipresent orchestral arrangements provided by the National Philharmonic Orchestra are more than compensatory. Probably David Gilmour plays his best guitar solos here, quite comparable to the perfect ones on the "A momentary lapse of reason" album: the guitar solos sound is really loud, present and very sustained. Gilmour does not play very much rhythmic guitars here. Like "The Wall", the tracks have full of special & subtle sounds, and they really contribute to enhance the artistic value of this record: steps, passing cars, meowing cat, ticking clock, whispers, conversations, laughs, blowing wind, passing jet fighter, explosion and barking dog among others: all those effects need a careful listen and of course an excellent sound system to be fully appreciated; actually this album has the "Holophonics" technology, a 3-D sound processing, and not the "Qsound" technology, which is the case for his solo album "Amused to death". Roger Waters monopolizes the VERY emotional lead vocals, being half narrator, half singer. The overall rhythm is VERY slow, so that this record may sound boring for many: probably a relax mental predisposition must occur during such a listen. Some elements, like the lyrics, evoke some war commemoration, which naturally emanates from the overall mood when the orchestra is playing. There are some very good sax parts on a couples of tracks. The famous Waters' female backing vocals make their appearance, especially on "Not now john".

This record mainly has the same orientation as Waters' solo album "Pros & cons of hitchhiking", plus the delightful orchestral arrangements, and minus the exceptional Eric Clapton's bluesy guitars.

Rating: 4.5 stars