THE FINAL CUT

I fall into that category of Pink Floyd fan who discovered them with ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ as a teenager, albeit a couple years after it released; then really didn’t pay them too much mind until Rogers Waters bashed a big white brick into my skull with ‘The Wall’. After that they had my full attention.

For me, and probably many others who fit the same Floyd-fan profile, ‘The Final Cut’ is a peculiarity. Richard Wright was long gone, although most of us didn’t know it yet, but the keyboards are remarkably similar to those of ‘The Wall’, which in fact was much more sparse than most of their seventies albums. But for me at least this album has the same general themes and tenor as its predecessor, with gloomy arrangements; abrupt and discordant flair-ups to provide companionship to Roger Water’s angst-ridden lyrics; and that sense of incessant patience in the slowly-executed work as a whole. The album hasn’t held up well with most hard-core fans over the years, but it still sold quite well and ended up at or near the top of the charts on both sides of the Atlantic, which is more than just about anything else considered progressive was doing at the time.

This is one of the last foldout album covers I can remember buying, and also was one of the first not to be released on 8-track, which undoubtedly caused many an old hippie to have to upgrade their car’s stereo as a result.

While this has been called a de facto Waters solo album, I think there’s enough of David Gilmour’s distinctive guitar to make it at least sound like a Floyd album, and to be honest Nick Mason’s drums hadn’t exactly been a dominant presence since ‘Animals’ anyway, and maybe even since before that. The orchestra and saxophone were definite plusses for me, and as a piano junkie I was more than happy to hear plenty of that as well.

But the best parts of this album are the lyrics. In addition to providing a sort of continuity to ‘The Wall’, this album also brings a sense of closure to that album, which didn’t really have one of its own. And there are some of Waters’ best lines here as well, including the unforgettable verse -

“If it wasn’t for the Nips being so good at building ships, the yard would still be open on the Clyde. And it can’t be much fun for them beneath the Rising Sun, with all their kids committing suicide.”

And the fitting tribute for those leaders who play chess with the lives of those who appoint them as protectors –

“Safe in the permanent gaze of a cold glass eye with their favorite toys, they’ll be good girls and boys; in the Fletcher Memorial Home for colonial wasters of life and limb”.

The link to ‘The Wall’ begins with “The Post War Dream”, and carries the tale on for the rest of the front side of the album with a series of vignettes about the madness of the aftermath of war in the battle-scarred psyches and broken lives. Waters never did seem to get over being a war-baby, and the emotions he reveals here are ones that most of us were spared for years afterwards. Unfortunately a new generation may live them again, which is what makes words like these important even now, despite what one might think of this album musically or in the context of the band’s career.

With the back side Waters seems to be shifting to laying blame and lashing out though, specifically Ms. Thatcher and her ilk around the world, but takes a few moments out on the title track to lay out the postscript of Pink’s story, and to reveal that the album’s title refers to that final gash in the arm of self-destruction.

And the album ends with a glimpse of a possible end for our world as a whole, in a firestorm of nuclear holocaust, mixed in the dual picture once again of self-destruction. It’s a pretty bleak ending, bringing finality but not necessarily closure. I think Syd Barrett wasn’t the only one in this band that danced with the muse of madness.

Anyway, all that aside I think that this is an important album, not only in the history of this band but also in our collective modern musical history. And being someone who listened to hundreds and hundreds of this album’s peers in about a ten year window before and after its release, I can say with confidence that it evokes as much or more emotion, good or bad, as any of them. So I don’t have any problem giving this one four stars, and recommending it to anyone who hasn’t experienced it. It's very close to a five star album in my mind, missing only because of its slightly sorded genesis. Anyway, the human portraits painted here (and the actions that led to their being experienced in the first place) are why we should all continue to hope for

peace