You may call them ’’Space Rockers’’ . You may call them ’’Psychedelics’’ or if u can really crack the outer shell of a Pink Floyd number you would call them Poets....of the greatest kind. The Final Cut is an often underrated Floyd album . I can think of a lot of guys in high school and in college, who used to swear by floyd and claimed to have listened to early recordings of The Architectural Abdads (The Band was formerly known as The T-Sets , The Abdads , The Screaming Abdads, and The Architectural Abdads before Julliette Gale , one of the backup vocals married Rick Wright and The Abdabs broke up).But everytime I asked those guys their opinions on The Final Cut , I invited frowns. Maybe , the one aspect where the album loses out is the absence of a single standout number.But , believe me the pros of this album beat the cons , fair and square.
The theme is the World War II . Dedicated to Roger Water’s father Eric Fletcher Waters, who was killed on the battlefields of World War II . But the album is not just a requiem or an eulogy....throughout this album Waters asks some questions.....some deep , serious questions and he ends the album with
’’And as the windshield melts
My tears evaporate
Leaving only charcoal to defend
Finally I understand
The feelings of the few
Ashes and diamonds
Foe and friend
We were all equal in the end’’
Before going into the details of the songs in general there are a few features which deserve a special mention .Firstly , throughout the album Waters blatantly challenges few of the biggest political names of history
’’What happened to the post war dream?
Oh Maggie ! Maggie what have we done? ’’
Roger rages at Margaret Thatcher’s decision to sink the General Belgrano during The Falklands War . Although , you really need to be from the UK to completely understand the bile spat here . On another occasion , he says
’’Brezhnev took Afghanistan
Begin took Beirut
Galtieri took the Union Jack
And Maggie over lunch one day
Took a cruiser with all hands
Apparently to make him give it back’’.
I just wish we had this kind of Liberty of Art in our country.
Secondly , the use of Holophonics , a a special encoding process that allows the simulation of 3d sound, you have got to listen to feel it . All that I can say is that it really does give a certain amount of imaging, around you rather than just between the speakers.
Finally , I feel very rarely has such amount of thought gone into the cover art of an album. The cover depicts a few WW II service medals but it’d take u a while to figure out what each of them stand for . On the other side it shows a backstabbed soldier , standing tall.The pictures are pretty self-explanatory and meaningful.
Its not easy to pinpoint one specific ’’best’’ song from the album , ’cause its the same crossfading formula used in The Wall . But tracks like The Gunner’s Dream (actually , though it says The Gunners Dream on the cover , this is what was meant to be ) , Post war Dream and Fletcher Memorial Home , stand out . But , make no mistakes no number in this entire album is less than great.
There are excerpts that stand out and pieces that stand out as well. My personal favourite being the last few lines of The Gunner’s Dream and David Gilmour’s solo with a piece from Tchaikovskiy’s Nutcracker that appears in the title track .
This album may not have been commercially successful but it contains some of the greatest compostions ever. Music has been played and used here like never before and not much after either . There is a line near the beginning of the title track ’’The Final Cut’’
’’If you negotiate the minefield in the drive
And beat the dogs and cheat the cold electronic eyes
And if you make it past the shotgun in the hall
Dial the combination
Open the priesthole
And if I’m in I’ll tell you what’s behind the wall’’
The uniqueness lies in the fact that after ’’And if I’m in I’ll tell .....’’ you can’t hear anything more due to the sound of the shotgun in the hall , implying you cannot make it past ’’the hall’’ yet the lyrics are mentioned so that you realise what exactly you couldn’t hear. Well , if not for anything , they deserve praise for this immaculate line of thinking .
This was almost Roger Waters’ solo project with him singing all the songs except Not Now John where David Gilmour joins in along with some female backups. The albums that came out after this were mostly Gilmour’s solo projects .Pink Floyd was kind of disintegrated after this album before Dave took charge and released a few successful albums like Momentary Lapse of Reason , Division Bell , etc.
If you belong to the category who have been ardent followers of rock all throughout but are getting kind of bored listening to the same stuff made up of six-strings and drums and sometimes pointless lyrcs, well take a walk on the quieter side for a change and pick up this album , worked out just fine for me. This not the average listener’s cup of tea but if you like the abstract and off-the-track stuff you will dig this album.
Greatness of any form of art lies in its ability to stand the test of time. The Final Cut was released in 1983 , 20 years later you can still identify the lyrics with the ongoing crises of the world . That to me is sheer greatness . But then again , who am I but a poor Floyd fan.
[forever indebted to the internet for trivia]