Roger Waters - Dark Side of the Moon Redux 2023

Nonsense. It's simply a hubristic ego trip for a pompous 80 year-old who lost his singing voice years ago. There's is nothing "progressive" about it. What, did Roger get tired of cashing in on his never ending The Wall tours he's been on for a couple decades, and needs a new more reliable funding source?  Oh, and none of the Beatles wasted time on re-doing Sgt. Peppers or Abbey Road in their entirety. They moved on. 

People doing covers of The Beatles honors the band, they are not meant to eradicate the past, as Waters has with songs like "Have a Cigar" which Roy Harper sang so brilliantly. Roger never forgave Roy for being able to sing the song better than he could. 

But all that aside, I heard the new Money interpretation and found it both interesting and a little boring. What really WOWed me in a big way were his re-recordings of classic songs during the pandemic, like this one. It's like a thousand times more impressive than the original:

I find it humorous when I read fans saying sh*t like, "Can't Roger write a song without politics?" and forgetting he's done it since the 60s. Or "David isn't political" and not realizing DAVID invited Roger to the Palestinian Benefit/Charity, but David can't hold similar views because his son-in-law is Ukrainian.

It seems you are one of those who have totally misunderstood what Waters said about the Ukrainian war. Try listening directly to his words from youtube instead of the right-wing propaganda.

But I don't think I'll buy the album anyway.

As bad and pointless as this is. Nothing Waters will ever do will be as bad and pointless as A Momentary Lapse of Reason or The Endless River or Metallic Spheres for that matter. 

Yes, not even Ça Ira is as unnecessary as those albums. 

But this whole project rubs me completely the wrong way. First of all, people enjoy DSOTM not just because of the "message", but because of the music, and part of that is what other musicians (incl. Clare Torry) brought to the table. This redux album is supposed to have more spoken words and more downbeat instrumentation, but knowing Roger's track record since The Wall, that's a recipe for disaster. Roger seems to think the message is all that matters.

Second, what's the point in adding lyrics to a song whose message was already as clear as day? Roger claims that the message/point of DSOTM hasn't stuck around or needs a refresher, but what does adding a bunch of cartoonish poetry to one of the most obvious songs of all time, message-wise, do? Why drive home the point of the song by making it musically even more obvious?

Lastly, from a pure aural perspective, not taking into account the reasons why this exists in the first place, this is just not that good. Why even bother redoing an album that sounded as good as DSOTM did back in 1973? You're just setting yourself up for failure, and the mix and vocals here just sound bad. We have a frame of reference, we know how satisfying the return to the vocals sounds in the original because of the great instrumental part. Here, you recognize the skeleton of that arrangement underneath all the growling, but it doesn't work like this because the solos aren't there.

Ultimately, Roger pretends he's remaking it because "not enough people recognised what it's about, what it was I was saying then", but he's really just lying to himself. He's remaking it because he's a sour little b*****d who's changed a lot since 1973. The people well understand the point of DSOTM, and what makes it great. At the end of the day, he's just yet another aging rocker who doesn't realize he should've called it quits decades ago.