Roger Waters
Amused To Death

THE REVIEW

Roger Waters has never gotten over the loss of his father during the Anzio landings, and nearly fifty years later, Amused To Death begins and ends with the calm and dramatic account of an English soldier from World War II. A critical reading of Amused To Death cannot overlook the war and the devastation it brings to the body and soul of men. From this, and at a later stage, one can appreciate Waters' musical choices and interpretative flair. The album is a sort of apology for man and his weaknesses, where every track is essential to understand the rest, both in terms of musical flow and individual themes addressed.

The senseless and uncontrollable death drive of men is already translated in the first track ("What God Wants, Part I") into a bitter reflection on God's will: "God wants crusade, God wants jihad, God wants good, God wants bad". A rock song with an irresistible refrain that seems to sarcastically underline its heavy contents.
It is followed by the two parts of "Perfect Sense", where in the first, the visions and thoughts of a cinematic-memorable monkey inherit the feeling of restlessness from the previous track. The second is a simple and bitter observation on the power of money: "can’t you see, it all makes perfect sense, expressed in dollar and cents, pound shillings and pence". In the two compositions, the pianist touch and orchestral accompaniment emerge, which will characterize, respectively, the most reflective and the most paranoid moments throughout the album.
"The Bravery Of Being Out Range" is a closed and energetic rock that chases reflections, on the verge of frantic thoughts, on the military world. "Late Home Tonight", Part I and Part II, unfolds on an intimate and familial terrain, Waters' voice becomes warmer and less inclined to melody. It is the most intense moment of the album, the music is just a backdrop for disturbing domestic vignettes, opposite and interposed to ironic observations on war: "the beauty of military life, no questions only orders and flight, only flight".
It is followed by "Too Much Rope", a melancholic track that denounces some contradictory aspects of human nature, probably the highest point of the entire work in terms of integration between music and lyrics.
"What God Wants, Part II" is just a call back to the first part, a temporary curtain to what on 33 rpm was the A side.

The second part begins with "What God Wants, Part III", a name perhaps given just because it was handy and due to the impossibility of finding a suitable one: an overly inspired Waters indeed lays out a decidedly rambling text over carpets of keyboards and piercing guitars. The following two tracks are the least integrated into the overall style of the work. "Watching TV" is the poignant story of a Chinese girl who loses her life in Tiananmen Square, a touching piece, sung with two voices and exquisitely accompanied by acoustic guitar. "Three Wishes" is a dreamlike episode tied to the memory of the artist's father.
The next and penultimate track is "It’s A Miracle", where once again the writer's cynical irony is the absolute protagonist: "They’ve got Pepsi in the Andes, (…) A Brazilian grew a tree, a doctor in Manhattan saved a dying man for free, it’s a miracle". The track fades and introduces the worthy closure of the album "Amused To Death. In technical terms, the title track is the last among the tracks and is like a desire to testify from beginning to end, almost obsessively, the final message. The human species has a natural tendency towards its own annihilation, and Waters finds nothing better than to have the concept reiterated by an alien during his anthropological tests. A splendid piece that is one of the pinnacles of his entire solo production and with Pink Floyd.

The first listen, let it be clear, is difficult, a bit like having reached this point in the review. The complex kaleidoscope of sounds and words assembled on the album is not immediately enjoyable; often the pleasure of listening to certain music is like a revelation, and the author loves to obscure his compositional genius under an overbearing personality. The search for hidden meanings, the perception of a hidden melody, the appreciation of background sounds are the necessary tools for active listening, free from the mechanisms of the music business that feeds us music which exhausts after a few radio airings.

"Amused To Death" is from 1992, since then Waters has practically not produced any new material and in November, after thirteen years, he will present his first opera. This is therefore, morally, the terminal album of the rock career of one of the geniuses of modern music. A point of arrival that concludes a musical discourse lasting thirty years, which without it, would have remained without its passionate epilogue.