Very grateful to a friend of mine, who recently gifted me for my fiftieth birthday the latest release by the creative force and songwriter of Pink Floyd ,Roger Waters, an astounding conceptual masterpiece entitled : "Is This the Life We Really Want?" his first rock album in 25 years, superbly produced by Nigel Godrich (Radiohead, Beck etc).
At 73-year-old Waters still has not mellowed with age and he's certainly not too pleased, with the current state of the world. In fact, he's downright angry.That's a reason why "Is This the Life We Really Want?" arrives with an explicit lyrics warning.
The record is both a loud protest of current events and a continuation of the themes Waters last explored 25 years ago on "Amused to Death" which was a prescient study of popular culture, exploring the power of television in the era of the First Gulf War.
Anyone hoping for a bold new direction, or some level of subtlety from Waters is not going to find it on Waters latest release. And I for one am certainly not complaining. With a strong voice which vibrates with rage and fury over 12 tracks ,Waters paints a picture of a desperate world and issues an angry protest, against the things that make it so, from drone warfare, targeted assassination, “black site” torture, the refugee crisis, global warming, corporate greed, inequality, injustice, lying politicians, brainless leaders and "nincompoop" presidents.
Few musicians dispense political invective quite like Roger Waters. From the social order lambasting found on the Pink Floyd records Animals, The Wall and The Final Cut, plus a string of solo albums, Waters has long spoken out against what he sees as humanity’s greatest failures, mans inclination towards war and greed.On Is ths the life we really want? he sticks to his anti-war, and anti-greed rhetoric, with blunt, expletive-soaked verses, that I feel are much needed in the present time.
A song called Picture That sets the tone, a litany of modern outrage, from prosthetic limbs in Afghanistan to having an idiot for president :
‘Picture a shithouse with no fucking drains,’ Waters advises ‘Picture a leader with no fucking brains.’
Waters has been a fierce critic of US President Donald Trump and delighted audiences in Mexico City last year with a rendition of the 1977 Ping Floyd song “Pigs”, showing images of Trump with a machine gun outside the White House and giving a Nazi salute. On the day Trump was inaugurated, Waters declared on Facebook that “the resistance begins today.”
Picture That
Anyone hoping for a bold new direction, or some level of subtlety from Waters is not going to find it on Waters latest release. And I for one am certainly not complaining. With a strong voice which vibrates with rage and fury over 12 tracks ,Waters paints a picture of a desperate world and issues an angry protest, against the things that make it so, from drone warfare, targeted assassination, “black site” torture, the refugee crisis, global warming, corporate greed, inequality, injustice, lying politicians, brainless leaders and "nincompoop" presidents.
Few musicians dispense political invective quite like Roger Waters. From the social order lambasting found on the Pink Floyd records Animals, The Wall and The Final Cut, plus a string of solo albums, Waters has long spoken out against what he sees as humanity’s greatest failures, mans inclination towards war and greed.On Is ths the life we really want? he sticks to his anti-war, and anti-greed rhetoric, with blunt, expletive-soaked verses, that I feel are much needed in the present time.
A song called Picture That sets the tone, a litany of modern outrage, from prosthetic limbs in Afghanistan to having an idiot for president :
‘Picture a shithouse with no fucking drains,’ Waters advises ‘Picture a leader with no fucking brains.’
Waters has been a fierce critic of US President Donald Trump and delighted audiences in Mexico City last year with a rendition of the 1977 Ping Floyd song “Pigs”, showing images of Trump with a machine gun outside the White House and giving a Nazi salute. On the day Trump was inaugurated, Waters declared on Facebook that “the resistance begins today.”
Picture That
While this record is firmly rooted in the present, there are echoes of the past, ticking clocks, ghostly (and sometimes angry) disembodied voices, barking dogs and a passing reference to the guitar riff of "Wish You Were Here" all serving as echoes of Pink Floyd's past without being a nostalgic trip down memory lane.
His track Smell the Roses draws on Animals, setting a melodic vocal line over a steamroller guitar riff evoking the classic Pink Floyd sound. The lyrics, however, have a decisively modern edge; Waters is clearly taking aim at the turbulence of our contemporary era with lines like:
“This is the room where they make the explosives/ Where they put your name on the bomb/ Here’s where they bury the buts and the ifs/ And scratch out words like right and wrong”
Smell the Roses
His track Smell the Roses draws on Animals, setting a melodic vocal line over a steamroller guitar riff evoking the classic Pink Floyd sound. The lyrics, however, have a decisively modern edge; Waters is clearly taking aim at the turbulence of our contemporary era with lines like:
“This is the room where they make the explosives/ Where they put your name on the bomb/ Here’s where they bury the buts and the ifs/ And scratch out words like right and wrong”
Smell the Roses
As on “Amused To Death,” Waters is angry with God, too, or perhaps the idea of God, in “Deja Vu”:
Deja Vu
Deja Vu
I would have sired many sons, and I would not have suffered the Romans to kill even one of them
If I had been God
With my staff and my rod
If I had been given the nod
I believe I could have done a better job
The song then segues to one of the album’s finest lyrical moments, adding to its clear attacks on Trump a swipe at Obama era militarism:
If I were a drone
Patrolling foreign skies
With my electronic eyes for guidance
And the element of surprise
I would be afraid to find someone home
Maybe a woman at a stove
Baking bread, making rice, or just boiling down some bones
If I were a drone.
His powerful imagination reaffirms him as a great songwriter, capable of awakening consciousness and moving the world.His track Broken Bones delves into the torturing of innocents and other horrible acts carried out in freedoms name. It serves to point to a familiar Water's cry :
We cannot turn back the clock / We cannot go back in time/ But we can say Fuck you, we will not listen to your bullshit and lies, your bullshit and lies.
Broken Bones
Darwish , who died in 2008, is considered a Palestinian national symbol who was a member of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation .He is known as one of the great influential poets of the Islamic and Arab world. Born in a village in a village that later became part of northern Israel and a resident of countries including Lebanon, France and Jordan, he spent part of the last years of his life in the West Bank city of Ramallah
The poet was critical of Israel as well as of terror group Hamas, which currently rules the Gaza Strip.
The love poem that inspired Waters begins with the lines “Wait for her with an azure cup. Wait for her in the evening at the spring, among perfumed roses.” But it ends with the lines “There is no one alive but the two of you. So take her gently to the death you so desire, and wait.”
You can find a translation of poem on previous post on Mahmoud Darwish here :- https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/mahmoud-darwish-poet-of-resistance.html
The video features footage of Waters and his touring band performing in a studio, interspersed with scenes of a woman in a dressing room preparing for some kind of performance. That woman, Azurra is the same actress/dancer featured in the video for Roger's new tune "The Last Refugee."
The Last Refugee shows all the mixed emotions a woman who's been displaced from her homeland might feel. The 4:14 minute clip opens with a close up of an old transistor radio broadcasting a BBC Radio sign off. The musical intro gradually fades in with drums, as well as piano accompaniment,
The camera pans away from the radio to show a young woman dancing in a parka inside an old abandoned brick warehouse. As it pulls back further to show the squalor of the woman's living conditions, the scene briefly transitions to her dancing in a ballroom, wearing a glamorous black dress and then reverts back to the ramshackle warehouse, as Waters sings, “Lie with me now/Under the lemon tree skies/Show me the shy slow smile/You keep hidden by warm brown eyes.”
The video is co-credited to Waters and longtime associate Sean Evans. Evans previously directed the concert film “Roger Waters: The Wall,” which premiered in 2014 at the Toronto Film Festival. Fans can check out the “Last Refugee” video above.
The Last Refugee
In the "Wait for Her" video, Azzura is shown sitting at a theatrical mirror as she applies makeup and nail polish. She also places two crumpled photos of a young girl, apparently her daughter, on the mirror and gazes sadly at them.
As the clip continues, a large scar is visible on the woman's neck, and she begins to cry. After changing into a new outfit, she leaves the dressing room and apparently heads toward a stage as the video ends. As for the woman's scar the video director Sean Evans explained that "it is a symbol of the physical torment refugees endure."
Wait for her
On a pool around the evening
Among the perfumed roses
Wait for her
With the patience of a packhorse loaded for the mountains
Like a stoic, noble prince
Wait for her
With seven pillows laid out on the stair
The scent of womens' incense fills the air
Be calm, and wait for her
And do not flush the sparrows that are nesting in her braids
All along the barricades
Wait for her
And if she comes soon
Wait for her
And if she comes late
Wait
Let her be still as a summer afternoon
A garden in full bloom
Let her breathe in the air that is foreign to her heart
Let her lips part
Wait for her
Waters has long been known for his vocal defence of the Palestinian people.So I am glad ,that Roger is still not sitting back in silence, still releasing his raw honesty. As an activist and human rights defender, he has never rested on his laurels, an individual who has continually used his voice to speak out, against abusers of power, whilst at same time issuing a plea for sanity. Using his talents.in the service of bringing people together and insisting they make themselves aware of the dire circumstances that we all face. His art inspires and enables us to keep up the struggle for a peaceful and just planet.
If you don't like politics, then stay away from this album. if not, listen to it, and bask in an old man's unrelenting rage.It is important to commend Waters and his strong stance and beliefs. There aren’t many celebrities who publicly take a pro-Palestinian stance. Waters is shaking the world with his new album a powerful and poignant statement for our times that simply should not be ignored. This record is exactly what the world needs to hear, it rips the greedy flesh right off of its bones, exposing the world and its leaders as inflated anti-humanitarians; leaving us disgraced at the cruelty we allowed to happen for the sake of currency and power. Stirling stuff. And as for comparisons with Pink Floyds last effort Endless River it beats it by miles. Another world is fucking possible.After all, is this the life we really want?
The musicians playing on the record, besides Waters himself who takes care of vocals, acoustic guitar and bass, are: Nigel Godrich (arrangement, sound collages, keyboards, guitar), Gus Seyffert (bass, guitar, keyboards), Jonathan Wilson (guitar, keyboards), Joey Waronker (drums), Roger Manning (keyboards), Lee Pardini (keyboards), and Lucius (vocals) with Jessica Wolfe and Holly Proctor.
Roger Waters Poem - Is this the life we really want?
