Vegetable Layne wrote:I always felt a lot of the follow-up album was a reaction to this one, making several big, long tracks with huge sounds to sharply differ from the quieter, more desperate tone of this record.
That's actually probably what happened, although a lot of AMLoR's big 80s sound seemed to have more to do with Gilmour experimenting with those sounds and then being told to turn it into a Pink Floyd album.
YetAnother wrote:Tigers should have been the first track to make it easy to skip.
Now I agree with you in one respect, but on the other hand I feel like doing that would ruin the bookend effect that the car radio has in "The Post War Dream" and "Two Suns in the Sunset". I really just wish they hadn't bothered adding "Tigers" at all - the album functioned much better without it in my opinion.
Some moments, I love The Final Cut. I love the emotion behind it, a few of the songs, the message, and the need for it in 1983 in the midst of the Falklands War and Cold War tension. Some moments, I absolutely hate it. I hate the vocals, the maudlin strings, the over-reliance on current affairs, and the self-righteousness of it all. Not even The Wall had that.
Although I have since outlived my Waters-Ruined-Everything phase in my Pink Floyd fandom, as evidenced by my own love for The Wall, I can't help but feel that the album could have benefited from more input by the rest of the band. That said, Gilmour reportedly didn't seem to care that much for it, so...
Also the vocals on some of these cuts are unbearable. It goes from quiet to screeching like a cat, especially on the title track and The Post War Dream.
It blows my mind that Roger released "When the Tigers Broke Free"/"Bring the Boys Back Home" as a single in 1982. I understand that he was promoting the film, and that those songs sum up a lot of the subject matter for him, but what the hell. I think whatever they followed that up with, whether Rick and Roger stuck around longer, or maybe they went straight from The Wall and did Pros and Cons and KAOS as Floyd albums - whatever would/could have followed their military ensemble/marching band/torch song single would have suffered from it, commercially. Unfortunately, The Final Cut was more of the same, for the most part. I consider it the black sheep because while there are weaker albums, those were still logical steps in their development. Even the sound of AMLOR seems more in line with where they would have headed if not for the stark production of The Wall; after hearing KAOS, I'm absolutely fine with four of the songs being co-written by outside lyricists.
And again, I do really like The Final Cut, even if it is their WTF moment.
It occurred to me today, while listening to John Lennon, that the chords and the time changes of the rhythm guitar riff (if you can call it that) of "Two Suns in the Sunset" is just the Mama don't gooooooooo! refrain in "Mother" - from John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, which Roger loved and took many cues from, and was his main reference for wanting a very sparse and "dry" (minimal reverb) sound on Dark Side (which was thankfully overruled by...everyone involved).
It would seen old Roger loves a bit of pop music. The Pink Floyd likes The Beatles that much, that they have the string section from Ticket to Ride on the end of Dark Side of the Moon. Spacey!
