“Was it our parents who made us this way, or was it God? Fuck it.” “I’m still ugly, you’re still fat,” a man says flatly to an unknown listener. Even the opener, “When We Were Young,” is miserable in its worldview. Waters exploits the albums’ best qualities for his new work, wonderfully titled “Is This the Life We Really Want?.” Waters, even more than most musicians, is not shy about his personal politics, and they are on full, angry display across the album’s twelve tracks. Both albums were rooted in anti-authoritarianism, something Pink Floyd did even more than other classic rock bands. “The Wall,” as we know, is a much more cinematic album (and literally a movie), but hardly less political. “Animals” is easily the bleakest album the band put out, a deeply anti-fascist album with a famously grayscale cover and extremely long, grinding songs. Still, their tenth and eleventh albums, “Animals” and “The Wall,” feel eerily relevant in 2017 (“Animals,” as it happens, turns 40 this year). People talk about Pink Floyd’s politics, but it’s still often obscured by (clouds) talk about the more avant-garde, experimental music that dominated their discography. But in the age where fascism has seen a sudden, scarily impressive rebound, Waters followed closely behind. Waters hasn’t released an album in nearly a quarter of a century, and for a while he seemed more than content doing tours of both his own work and Pink Floyd’s. This album is reminiscent of that behemoth in many ways, most obviously in a political sense. It feels dishonest to talk about the solo works of Pink Floyd members and compare them to “The Wall,” but in this case, Roger Waters might want us to do that. Key Tracks: “Picture That” “Is This the Life We Really Want?”
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