Granted I don’t know a whole lot about Margaret Thatcher and her reign in the UK, what with being Canadian and three years old when this originally came out, and for what it’s worth this album does give me a somewhat clearer outlook of the political picture during that period from an activist’s point of view, so it’s not a complete loss, but the unavoidable question remains; what the hell happened to Pink Floyd in the '80s? For all the sharp lyrics and right-minded stances, how did the band who once dabbled in abstract psychedelia and christened the world with its only 7/4 timed number one single, “Money,” during the colossal soundscape adventure that is the Dark Side Of The Moon, end up making such over polished, over produced, uninteresting music? The apocalyptic tone of fighter planes bombing and powerful news clips are counter balanced by cheesy and often downright shitty synth music even by eighties standards. The Final Cut would be a fantastic album if it was performed solely by the National Philharmonic Orchestra or simply Roger Waters with an acoustic guitar or classic church organ and Paul Rothchild or Bruce Botnick produce it rough and raw, gawd dammit! They’d get some fucking blues and grunge in there and their fingernails dirty doing it! Where were you Steve Albini? This is slicker than oyster shit and slips past your subconscious faster than it goes in, making it an almost complete waste of time. The world had to wait another ten long years for Rage Against The Machine to come around and do it right. That’s time we’ll never get back…
1. The Post War Dream
2. Your Possible Pasts
3. One of the Few
4. When the Tigers Broke Free
5. The Hero's Return
6. The Gunner's Dream
7. Paranoid Eyes
8. Get Your Filthy Hands off My Desert
9. The Fletcher Memorial Home
10. Southampton Dock
11. The Final Cut
12. Not Now John