THE WALL

The most ambitious but highly overrated final album by the classic line-up!

Even though this LP was amongst of those which forced me into music addiction in the first place, today I can more feel that this well-elaborated concept album is a bit outdated. I like Waters' baritone but here his voice is often too stressed and neurotic. The operetic concept was interestingly devised at the time, but now I don't enjoy this boring arena- sounding pomposity. "The Wall" is as close as PINK FLOYD gets to mainstream pop-rock fused with some punk aggressiveness and hate. While that is not necessarily bad thing, quite on the contrary, Waters' frustrated and angst-filled libretto is very difficult to follow. The best moments are nevertheless among my all-time favorite Floyd songs: mini- epic "Another Brick In The Wall", "Mother", "Good Bye Blue Sky", "Empty Spaces", wonderful ballad "Hey You", beautiful instrumental of "Is There Anybody Out There" and "Comfortably Numb". And by chance on most of these Gilmour has a prominent role as collaborator/vocalist. The rest pretty much consists of the Waters' exhibitions and boring and painful stuff that is better to skip. I would say this is a good album for Floyd fans and for general pop-rock listeners.