THE FINAL CUT

"A milestone in the history of awfulness" was how one reviewer greeted this 1982 release from prog titans Pink Floyd. And it's hard to disagree. Basically a selection of re-heated leftovers culled from the same sessions that produced the infinitely superior 'The Wall', the aptly-titled 'The Final Cut' would prove to be the final nail in the coffin of Roger Waters doomed relationship with his fellow band-mates and the last studio album featuring both Waters(bass, vocals) and David Gilmour(guitar, vocals). Essentially a Waters solo piece, 'The Final Cut' is the most un-Pink Floyd of Pink Floyd albums, a slow, gloomy, tedious collection of angry polemics railing against a multitude of subjects ranging from the then state-of-the-nation, Margaret Thatcher's iron rule and the bloody Falkland's conflict. Waters wrote the entire album bar a couple of tracks grudgingly co-written with Gilmour, and one look at the the credits on the album's back sleeve, which reads: "written by Roger Waters, performed by Pink Floyd", tells you everything you need to know about the crumbling intra-band relationships. With keyboardist Richard Wright fired in the aftermath of 'The Wall', the focus here is less on melody and music and much more on Waters strained lyrics and wordy compositions, a style loathed by Gilmour who sincerely believed that if the songs weren't good enough for 'The Wall' then why should they be good enough for 'The Final Cut'. Indeed, it's a miracle an album actually got made. Despite the oppressively maudlin tone however, the album would still prove popular on both sides of the Atlantic, showcasing Pink Floyd's enduring worldwide popularity, though many agree that it was probably more to do with the success of 'The Wall' than anything else. When asked about the album Gilmour usuallY reels off a terse trademark answer: that there are only three good songs on the whole album, 'The Fletcher Memorial Home', the title-track and 'When The Tigers Broke Free', though in truth there is very little here to set the pulse racing, even for the most die-hard of fans. In the aftermath of the album's release Waters would quit the group, kicking off a messy period of legal action over who actually owned the Pink Floyd name, with the bassist claiming in a typical fit of egocentric grandstanding that the group could not carry on without it's main writer.The remaining duo of Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason would eventually win, and the Pink Floyd story would continue with mellow soft-rock of 1987's 'A Momentary Lapse Of Reason' and 1994's semi-decent 'The Division Bell'. However, as the name would suggest, 'The Final Cut' would prove to be the end of an era, showing that even a group as enormous as Pink Floyd can eventually run out of creative steam. The last two album's - which coincidentally featured a returning Richard Wright - are hardly classics, yet they seem positively inspired when compared to the dreary doom-mongering that clouds what is surely the least-accessible and least-loved Pink Floyd album. 'The Final Cut' indeed.

STEFAN TURNER, STOKE NEWINGTON, 2012