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The Final Cut

THE FINAL CUT
 
 
The Final Cut  is the twelfth studio album by the English progressive rock band Pink Floyd, released on 21 March 1983 by Harvest Records in the United Kingdom and internationally and on 2 April 1983 in the United States by Columbia Records.  It is Pink Floyd’s last studio album to include founding member, bass guitarist and songwriter Roger Waters, and their only album on which he alone is credited for writing and composition.  It is also the only Pink Floyd album that does not feature keyboardist Richard Wright.  Waters originally planned The Final Cut as a soundtrack album for the 1982 film Pink Floyd – The Wall.  With the onset of the Falklands War, he rewrote it as a concept album, exploring what he considered the betrayal of his father, who died serving in the Second World War.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 

While they never quite reached those heights again, their later albums explored Gordon Gano’s upbringing as the son of a Baptist minister.  James Christopher Monger writes in Allmusic of their second album (released in 1984):  “After the surprise success of their landmark debut, Violent Femmes could have just released another collection of teen-rage punk songs disguised as folk, and coasted into the modern rock spotlight alongside contemporaries like the Modern Lovers and Talking Heads.  Instead they made Hallowed Ground, a hellfire-and-brimstone-beaten exorcism that both enraged and enthralled critics and fans alike.  Like Roger Waters purging himself of the memories of his father’s death through [the Pink Floyd albums] The Wall and The Final Cut, bandleader Gordon Gano uses the record to expel his love/hate relationship with religion, and the results are alternately breathtaking and terrifying.”  

 

(November 2014)