The Wall

Band: Pink Floyd
Album: The Wall
Release Year: 1979
Genres: art rock, arena rock, rock opera

1) In the Flesh?; 2) The Thin Ice; 3) Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 1; 4) The Happiest Days of Our Lives; 5) Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2; 6) Mother; 7) Goodbye Blue Sky; 8) Empty Spaces; 9) Young Lust; 10) One of My Turns; 11) Don't Leave Me Now; 12) Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 3; 13) Goodbye Cruel World; 14) Hey You; 15) Is There Anybody Out There?; 16) Nobody Home; 17) Vera; 18) Bring the Boys Back Home; 19) Comfortably Numb; 20) The Show Must Go On; 21) In the Flesh; 22) Run Like Hell; 23) Waiting for the Worms; 24) Stop; 25) The Trial; 26) Outside the Wall.

Best Song: Comfortably Numb


Yes, people, I am reviewing The Wall, the second-most famous Floyd album behind Dark Side of the Moon. While certainly not the first rock opera, or even the best, it definitely stands out as the most famous, so I knew I would have to tackle it sooner or later. It's intriguing, thought-provoking, and monolithic, but it's also overblown and clumsy. It showboats too much for a rock album. So sorry to disappoint the fanatics who swear by it, but this is not their best work. Don't get me wrong, though--this is nonetheless an essential stop on anyone's journey through rock history, and a very enjoyable one at that.

The story goes that during one concert, Roger Waters spat on a disruptive fan and subsequently realized how alienated he had become from his fellow man. He proceeded to write the story of Pink, a wimpy kid growing up in wartime (presumably WWII) England with no father and a horrifyingly overprotective mother. He's emotionally abused by the disciplinarian school system, and his mother represses him to the point that he becomes unable to form adult relationships, thus forming a disturbing Oedipal bond between them. Pink subconsciously builds a "wall" around himself, isolating him from the world in order to prevent more emotional suffering. He grows up to be a rock star, but his wife's infidelity is the last straw. He completes the Wall, and immediately regrets it, but resigns himself to his fate. For some reason, he then becomes a sort of dictator, "cleansing" the world of gays, Jews, blacks, et cetera. This is probably just a hallucination, a metaphor for the damage he has done to others by refusing contact with them. He puts himself on trial within his own mind, and finding himself guilty, tears down the Wall.

The album begins promisingly, with a decent overture and the first two parts of "Another Brick in the Wall." The music complements the words quite well: the endless guitar thrumming of Part 1 really drives home Pink's loneliness in his father's absence, and the guitar solo at the end of Part 2 sounds like an obvious "tsk, tsk" at the sad state of the British educational system (in Waters' opinion; I have no idea). "Mother" is sweet and creepy at the same time: "Mama's gonna check out all you girlfriends for you...keep Baby healthy and clean." Errghh. Then we feel Pink's loneliness increase until he finally decides to cut himself off entirely from humanity, and the first disc ends.

The first few songs on Disc 2 are decent, but it sure goes downhill after that. "Comfortably Numb" is great, of course, with the famous, mind-bendingly awesome solo and chill-inducing vocal deliveries. The rest are overblown, melody-less, and just boring. And what's with the rebirth of Nazism? I guess there is an appropriate way to do that in a story, but Mr. Waters certainly doesn't have a clue. It's cliche and pointless here; a total red herring, distracting us from the original theme of the album. "Run Like Hell" is decent, but it still only stumbles along, rather than flowing like the great stuff I mentioned earlier. And then we get to "The Trial," which is so hammy and cartoony and carnivalesque (yep, that's right) that it destroys nearly all the empathetic grimness we've gathered on Pink's behalf. It's so hilariously bad unless you have the film handy, since this still is the best segment visually.

The main problem with this album is, half the time it forgets it's a rock album and just goes straight into "bad opera" territory. For example, I cannot stand "Don't Leave Me Now." It's nothing but Pink's pathetic, high-pitched, nails-on-a-chalkboard wailing about his wife leaving him. It would have been fine for a song opener, but four minutes? Come on, Roger. Sure, this is a rock opera, so we should expect some of the characters' exaggerated passion to spill over onto our side of the stage. But this is one of several glaring moments when Waters forgets the other half of the term: it is a rock opera, and melody should always be the top priority. It happens in "Bring the Boys Back Home," too, except this time the grand, bombastic, orchestrated anthem has NOTHING to do with the theme of the album. It's just Waters moaning about war and how, yeah, it's still going on. Forget the showboating. I think the subtle moments, like the little girl at the beginning of "Goodbye Blue Sky," are far more moving. Ah, well. Maybe it's just 'cause I've never been dumped.

Still, on the whole, The Wall is a very good album. The story is well suited to the band, and David Gilmour is in top form--so even when the songs suck, you can still enjoy his playing. We can really empathize with Pink, and the album succeeds in a adding a certain "romance" to his awful struggle. And who can honestly say they've never been in Pink's shoes before? No wonder this one's so popular among young adults--you'd almost think Waters invented Emo before 1980. The difference was, Waters' emotional crises were genuine, and he actually knew how to make a good song out of it. Even it would have sounded better on Broadway.

Rating: 8