New Roger Waters album "Is This The Life We Really Want?" - June 2, 2017

I thought the same when I heard it for the first time.

 

I NEVER need reassurance with my musical tastes. I'm totally secure in them. I like what I like. And I love what I love. And I couldn't give a flying fig what anybody else thinks.
This is a discussion forum. A lot of people disagree with you.
I'm one.
Easy as that.

 

If you bandy around phrases like:

Then don't be surprised if someone replies and disagrees. Because, frankly, you do not know what you are talking about.

 

Polite, but firm.

 

Roger loves touring these days. He has toured pretty much everything he can from his back catalogue. This album was as much a licence to launch a new tour as anything else - a means to an end. I think he realised that doing yet another greatest hits tour with no fresh injection of new stuff at all might be one step too far.

Having said all that, it is a fantastic album. I listened to it again last night for the first time in about a month and it gets better with every time. I now love the last three tracks, they really hit hard. I was not much of a fan of Beautiful Girl initially but that really delivers now as well. Given that this record was knocked up in fairly quick time for Roger, it would be great to see what he could put out if he spent a long time in the studio developing and nurturing a piece in the way he used to do. Maybe once he has got this latest huge tour out of the way we will be treated to something along those lines. I can't see him hanging up his hat anytime soon, he seems far too driven for that.

 

I agree.

I disagree. I think part of why it's great is because he didn't spend ages overcooking it.

 

I've been waiting for a new Roger Waters forever. Surprisingly it hasn't won me over quite yet and I'm not one of those everythingwasbetterintheclassicera-types. I have actually been excited about the idea of a current mature Roger Waters album.

I like the overall sound signature and Nigel Godrich's production, the cover and title. Like some others I think the sound is unneccesary compact and muddy but that is not really a deal breaker.
What it misses for me personally is that certain factor that pulls you in and makes you want to dig deeper. Also there is still not a killer track that makes me want to hear it over again.

It is hard to point out exactly what it is but I think I miss something greater in the melody lines. They seem to be quite lazy and uninventive (Deja Vu and The Most Beautiful Girl are the strongest ones in this sense but not quite there).

I don't mean that all music has to be catchy and full of harmonies but it needs something more to move me IMO. A good melody line can also highlight a good lyric.

I see many warmed up to it after a while. Perhaps I need more time to get the neuances?

 

Because you do believe you know?

Anyway, I pointed out the last interview from RollingStone. The title track ITTLWRW was just taken in one take.

 

Still listening frequently and still loving every bit of it. No inclination to skip any one track, once it's spinning, I just have to listen through the lot.

The track I was unsure about initially is The Most Beautiful Girl but I now l adore it, like the rest of the album.

I have seen countless reviews which say this is Roger's finest solo work.

For anyone to suggest that "Roger did not care much for this album" is utter nonsense. In the televised interview he gave in front of an audience for the NYT (I think), he said the album "is brilliant", and that Nigel did a fantastic job.

Of course, like anyone, I can only express my own personal view. I have been hooked on all things Floyd (and solo efforts) since 1970, deriving enormous pleasure from their works, and I have derived as much pleasure, and been moved more so, by this latest RW release than any of the previous works.

 

Isn't it great? For years I thought that Roger ceased to play bass and couldn't be bothered - even less able - to cut a good bass track. Glad I was proven wrong.

 

That's my assesment too. Glad Nigel lured him to do some bass. And sometimes the first take is the magical one.

 

Still listening, often.

"The Most Beautiful Girl" is still my favorite track, sounds like something off Atom Heart Mother. Second for me would be "Bird in a Gale".

Best Floyd-anything since The Wall.

 

Great album, perhaps even his best solo album so far. I first bought it on CD but returned it to the store because of the bad mastering and changed it to the vinyl edition which sounds much better.

 

Indeed, indeed.

"The secret committee, safe in it's lair
Conveniently far from the cold desert air
Puts a tick in a box, turns a key in a lock
To loosen the bonds in her hair"

BEAUTIFUL

Also, a lovely reference to A.A Milne "Christopher Robin says Alice go home, they're no longer changing the guard" (and not the first time Roger has referenced A.A Milne).

 

There's Pros and Cons of referencing other authors.

 

Exactly, there's more to this "Pooh" business than meets the eye!

 

Are you guys serious about The Most Beautiful Girl? Have you heard Roger's singing on this song? He cannot even f!@#$*g sing in tune! It is frankly quite an embarrassment.

Girrrrrrllll in the Worllllddddd

From Imdb: Roger Waters - Biography - IMDb

"Is partially tone-deaf. Uses earpieces in concert to help him sing."

 

Like all Rog' vocals, it's brilliant vocalising.

 

Dunno man, I love his singing on TFC, Pros and Cons and ATD, but on the Most Beautiful Girl, hhhmmmm no!

 

I was slow to pick it up given how unhappy I was with his whole solo career (and FINAL CUT is my favorite Floyd lp.....) but glad I finally did; to me it's like everything since then never happened and he went back to the FINAL CUT feel and intent and actually decided, hmm, let's maybe try to make it sound a little bit more like traditional Pink Floyd.......I can "hear" what Gilmour could/should have done with it and while maybe a missed opportunity it couldn't have had that, it sounds warm and deep and empassioned and thoughtful and seems best case scenario for Waters at this age.

About 7 listens in, it hasn't even really occurred to me to think of it in terms of "individual tracks"--it feels very much like one work, one unified suite. This may be the quality that strikes others as "no distinctive tunes" or whatever, but I admire its unity of feel and intent. I couldn't even tell you the names of more than half the songs if you stopped me at a point and asked "what song is this on now"?

 

Regarding the sound – are all of the download options as compressed as the CD? Is the vinyl the only format with decent dynamics?

 

Unfortunately yes and yes :-(

 

I love this anecdote about The Most Beautiful Girl:

It has been 25 years since your last studio album of new material. When did you start writing these songs and was there a topic, a premise?
Years ago – around the millennium, when I started touring again in 1999–2000 – I spent a month in Nassau and got some people to come there. It was the band with [guitarist] Doyle Bramhall II, and we cut six or seven tracks. There was one song that we recorded then that I really liked. But it was completely surreal. "Judgment Day dawns black/Furnished with smoke" – that was the first line. And it's on this record. It's called "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World."

There was a bit in the song about a cowboy who was hung: "The rope hit the spot at the end of the drop/And the last thing they heard was him calling." That is now: "The bomb hit the spot where the numbers all stop/And the last thing she heard was her calling/Home/I'm coming home." I adapted the song and stuck in all the stuff about a bomber and drone warfare. I wrote those lyrics six months ago: "**** me, I can finally use this song."

Would love to hear those original tracks!

Roger Waters on Political 'Runaway Train' That Inspired New Album

 

The guys just class.

 

Those songs were probably recorded before the In The Flesh Tour in 2000. The guys went to Compass Point Studio in Nassau to record a few tracks.

Luckily, the article is still online, and it is dating from June 30, 2000 "Roger Waters Recording New Studio Album" : Roger Waters Recording New Studio Album

The songs that were recorded (5 total) includes Each Small Candle, Flicker and Flame (aka Flickering Flame), Love in Spite of Traffic (sadly we never heard of it). There is also a song "Old Man" that can be heard in the documentary from the In The Flesh DVD. The fifth song may very well be the one that eventually became The Most Beautiful Girl.

"Old Man" at 4min30s, "Flickering Flame" can also be heard at 6min23s.



I wished Roger would have released an album after his tour in 2000. His voice was much better as it is now (ITTLWRW), and I found Each Small Candle very appealing (specially the intro). I also think the band with whom he was playing with at the time had more character than the current one (he never heard of any of his band mates before meeting Nigel Godrich, that's crazy).

Also the initial thematic about Love was more attractive to me than the rather sinister thematic on ITTLWRW.

"Waters said that the new album will deal primarily with love. "I thought that what the whole album was going to be about [the concept behind] 'Each Small Candle,' -- the idea that we all had responsibility for our own behavior, and everything that everybody does in a life impinge on everyone else. But other songs are appearing and it seems to be broadening out from that concept," said Waters. "It may well still be called 'Each Small Candle,' because I like that title. But it now seems to be about love.""