“A lot of the aggravation came through in my performance, which, looking back, was really quite tortured,” he says, but “tortured” turned out to be the exact right approach to this material. But that was never the criterion he measured his singing by, and as far as emotion, this may well be his best work. Technically, this is far from Waters’ best performance: it’s the kind of thing that gets you laughed out of voice lessons. This will be John Lennon politicizing delivered with a Yoko Ono primal scream. Waters asks, “Should we shout?/Should we scream?/Whatever happened/To the postwar dream?” As will become clear from the rest of the album, the answer is a very definite yes. The fans who danced at the disco to “Another Brick in the Wall” are just going to have to wait their turn until well into side two. It opens with newscasts of Cold War paranoia before an organlike instrumental and muted brass set the solemn tone for the album. I can’t properly assess its value outside that context, but for those of us familiar with the band’s back catalog, it truly is a masterpiece, and a truly grand finale to the core lineup’s collaboration.
It clearly wasn’t for everyone, as some of the truly vicious contemporary reviews make clear, and I can’t say for sure how much my love of it is based on the affection Pink Floyd had earned through their earlier work. The Final Cut, is, indeed, a masterpiece, stripping away the rock operatics of their previous release, The Wall, to create something every bit as moving, and at times, even more so. If you’re being less generous, of course, you might prefer the words “preachy” and “self-indulgent.” Even Waters himself growled “not everything can be a fucking masterpiece,” but in this one case, the two of us will have to agree to disagree. This story of the death of his father in World War II and the continuation of senseless conflict into the present may well be the most outspokenly political and deeply personal thing he ever recorded. And while Waters’ ego trip destroyed the band, it’s hard to imagine this album coming together any other way. For the lineup that recorded some of the greatest albums of all time, this was the end. He would go on to record solo albums, and David Gilmour and Nick Mason would use the band name without him, but by 1983 Waters was going and keyboardist Richard Wright was already gone. And, in part because of that, it was the final cut he ever released as a member of Pink Floyd. But this is also a record where frontman Roger Waters took complete artistic control like a filmmaker given the right to final cut. In the lyrics, it refers to the pain of cutting through your own defense mechanisms to connect to others, and of losing loved ones to war. Waters left the band in 1985 and 'The Final Cut' remains the last Pink Floyd album he worked on.Few album titles have been as weighted with different meanings as The Final Cut. Recorded in eight British studios from July to December 1982, with an accompanying short film released in the same year, production of 'The Final Cut' was dominated by interpersonal conflict. The packaging, also designed by Waters, reflects the album's war theme. Most of its lyrics are sung by Waters lead guitarist David Gilmour provides vocals on only one track.
Waters originally planned 'The Final Cut' as a soundtrack album for the 1982 film "Pink Floyd – The Wall." With the onset of the Falklands War, he rewrote it as a concept album, exploring what he considered the betrayal of his father, who died serving in the Second World War. It is also the only Pink Floyd album that does not feature keyboardist Richard Wright. 'The Final Cut' is Pink Floyd's last studio album to include founding member, bassist and songwriter Roger Waters, and their only album on which he alone is credited for writing and composition. 'The Final Cut' (occasionally subtitled "A Requiem For The Post-War Dream by Roger Waters") is Pink Floyd's twelfth studio album, first released March 1983.
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