release date: Mar. 21, 1983
format: digital
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,28]
producer: Roger Waters, James Guthrie, Michael Kamen
label: Harvest Records - nationality: England, UK
Track highlights: 1. "The Post War Dream" - 2. "Your Possible Pasts" - 4. "When the Tigers Broke Free" - 6. "The Gunner's Dream" - 12. "Not Now John" - 13. "Two Suns in the Sunset"
12th studio album by Pink Floyd released four years after The Wall (Nov. 1979). As was the case then, Roger Waters is in almost complete control, as he not only wrote all tracks except one (co-written with Gilmour), but he also came up with the concept of the album, which is about loss and betrayals of war, and specifically WWII and The Falklands War. Also, Waters is the only band member to be credited as producer of the album, and he also deigned and made the album cover. David Gilmour and Nick Mason are credited as band members, despite Gilmour adding a couple of great guitar solos to "Your Possible Pasts" and "The Fletcher Memorial Home", and critics are divided in seing this as the final by the band and an actual solo release by Waters using the band name - some go as far as to argue that only a record contract obligation kept Waters from releasing this under his own name. Another point of discussion is that several tracks are in fact outtakes from The Wall, and Gilmour didn't forget to address that Waters now found compositions good enough despite they had previously been rejected for their missing qualities.
The album is the most mainstream pop / rock, singer / songwriter album by Pink Floyd to date, and I recall my immediate disappointment after having purchased the album. Yes, it contains fine songwriting and is almost like a linear novel, but Waters' voice and arrangements are tiresome in the long run, and I have never paid the album a lot of interest and actually resold it about a decade later. Still, the production sound is fine, the stories are anything but mediocre, and a couple of strong tracks keep it above average. In the aftermath of the album, Waters intended to dissolve the band, knowing as he had become its undisputed, yet self-appointed, leader. Gilmour and Mason, however, wanted to continue Pink Floyd, which led Waters to initiate law-suits against his former colleagues who won the right to carry on using the band name. Gilmour and Mason's decision to continue as Pink Floyd would later result in the first album without Roger Waters with A Momentary Lapse of Reason (Sep. 1987).
[ allmusic.com 3 / 5 stars ]
