Pink Floyd - The Final Cut

9.0 - England - 1983

Strictly speaking, this should be regarded as a Roger Waters solo album.  Indeed, the album's liner notes make this rather clear: "A requiem for the post-war dream by Roger Waters, performed by Pink Floyd".  Sick of phoning in his parts ever since Dark Side, Nick Mason opted to play with his racing cars and let a session player handle the drum parts.

Still, without the overwrought bombast of The Wall, Waters' cathartic condemnation of the warfare that took his father is actually fairly moving, even if it does have a bit of an 80s sound.  Also, while it was nice that the 2004 reissue added "When The Tigers Broke Free" (previously only heard in the film version of The Wall), I have no idea why they clumsily inserted it in between "One Of The Few" and "The Hero's Return", two tracks which musically and narratively melded together so well (I'd've put it between "Your Possible Pasts" and "One Of The Few").

Anyway, yeah, I know that Pink Floyd, particularly from this late period, is tremendously uncool, but this is one of the great anti-war records of the century.