Originally posted by Rambly
Originally posted by Q
I've been getting into Pink Floyd a lot lately after my girlfriend recommended it to me. It's one of the first times I've gotten into an actual band, so it's a bit of a new experience for me.
nice! they were one of the first bands i got into as a band too (i think they're not an uncommon early band especially for kind of geeky/moody people), although in my case i was about 12. i still think WYWH is one of their best (both thematically and musically) but i think i like Animals and Meddle a little bit more -- Meddle cuz it's almost... film soundtrack-y and dense and textured, and Animals cuz it's kind of cathartic hearing Roger Waters address societal ills and the empathy-numbing of modern (capitalist) society so directly, and so angrily and bitterly
update: i listened to the final cut and hooboy if you thought roger waters was angry and sad about the empathy-numbing nature of capitalism and war BEFORE, hot diggity dang
it also brings a lot of the wall into perspective -- a lot of what seemed childish and self-pitying on the wall seems almost mature and self-aware now. the schoolteacher on side 1 isn't some monster devoid of any motivation, he's a broken human being scarred by the violence of the war and the broken promises of the post-war era that betray the democratic and humanist ideals of ww2's veterans. he's dishing out the brutalism that he inherited as a survivor of ww2 because that's the only language he knows.
and "the final cut", maybe the best roger waters solo track ever written, completely erases the boundaries between pink and roger. the character on the wall
was childish and immature and had a deeply warped perspective of the world because he alienated himself, he distanced himself. "through the fish-eyed lens of tear-stained eyes / i can hardly define the shape of this moment in time." fuck. that feeling of reality-distortion you get when you're cut off from everyone else, the entire emotion of alienation, and the immediate, sharp snapping-out-of-it, summed up in just two lines. that's REAL good.
and those themes just feed into each other. the way systemic greed and selfishness robs us of our collective empathy. the way those things are the fuel that buoys war even in times when the wars are justified (the aftermath of ww2, while a victory for good, also resulted in a lot of gross imperialist aims being fulfilled). the way that people were suckered into the myth of an entirely virtuous allied forces. the way war blinds us, the way we get sucked into the machinery of capitalism as we grow, the way that vicious cycle continues. the way it all leads us to building our own walls around each other, alienating ourselves from each other. the fear and heartache and self-brutalizing that comes from being a vulnerable person, even when you know deep down inside that everyone else is vulnerable in the same ways, and the way that we can't quite suspend our disbelief about that for long enough to let people reach us.
unfortunately the music kinda sucks. 5/10
____________________