Reviewed in the United States on August 19, 2005
MY GOD, THAT'S ANNOYING! There's a review a few entries down, by a long-time Floyd fan, with a less-than-favorable review, some good points, but, my God, CAN'T YOU SEE IT WRITTEN RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU? And this goes for the people who insist on adding an "L" to Waters' name, making it "Walters." GET A CLUE, THEN WRITE YOUR REVIEW! It's "Waters." And "Gilmour." This is not difficult. Every Pink Floyd entry has people doing this, it kills the credidibity of your review. OK, enough venting.
Now, the record. "The Final Cut" is essentially a Roger Waters solo work, with David Gilmour and Nick Mason as members of the backing band. It seems to have the Pink Floyd name on it, as a selling point. Waters went head-long into this period of intense creative activity in 1976, and it lasted on into 1984, with no less than four VERY wordy albums, "Animals," "The Wall," "The Final Cut," and "The Pros And Cons Of Hitchiking," as well as a whole side of material for the film soundtrack "When The Wind Blows." Just in lyric content alone, these four (and a half) LP's, have more material in them than most people put out in their whole career. And to get it into perspective, listen to Bob Geldof's babbling in the toilet on "The Wall (film version)," where he sings "Stop." Before singing the lyrics to "Stop," he is singing "The Moment Of Clarity," from "The Pros And Cons Of Hitchiking," so, obviously, "Pros And Cons..." was written a full two years or more before "The Wall" movie ever came out, even though it was released two years after. There is a lot of over-lapping material in these works, and if you can take Waters' style of singing, it would be a humbling experience to hear all of them together, albeit, a little heavy-handed.
As for "The Final Cut" itself,the reviews fall into two catagories, those who really like it, and those who really dislike it; I am in the first group. The other members of Pink Floyd (Gilmour and Mason, with Wright out of the band at this point), would be in the latter. Gilmour has described "The Final Cut" as "a bunch of songs that were rejected from 'The Wall,' because, "nobody liked them then, why would anybody like them now?" I think, in the context presented here, it is a very good piece of recorded work, dark as it is. The sound quality is really beautiful, so clear, with sound effects playing into the score perfectly, as on any Floyd-related work.
The two explosions on this disc, are spectacular. The one at the end of "The Hero's Return," is so unexpected, I always laugh when I see someone not familiar with this recording whiplash theirself at it. And the holophonics used on "Keep Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert," sends a missile over your head, to explode behind you; really cool, even if your stereo doesn't have that good of fidelity.
The high points on this disc would be, the medly of "Southampton Dock," which leads into the title track, "The Final Cut," and "Not Now, John," even with the excessive use of a certain expletive, you get to hear the Floyd as they were meant to be; playing with authority, Gilmour singing the verses, trading vocals with Waters, the backing vocals sounding like something from "The Dark Side Of The Moon."
And too bad, it really was the final cut. The members of the band were so polarized at this point, that they couldn't be around one another. It HAD to fold, and in 1985, it did. The legal battle that went on for the next how many years, nearly crippled all their careers, and when they released "A Momentary Lapse Of Reason," it barely resembled a Floyd record, but looking at their output circa 1967 - 1977, nothing from "The Wall" on, did either.
