Counting The Cost Of Love That Got Lost

Roger Waters “Déjà Vu”

It really is too bad that Roger Waters can’t call Is This the Life We Really Want? a Pink Floyd album because musically and thematically, it belongs in that body of work much more so than any of his other solo works or anything that’s been labeled Pink Floyd since he left after The Final Cut in the early ‘80s. The sound of it, the feeling of it, the particular odd combination of theatrical grandeur and dialed-down English bitterness. It’s all there, except for David Gilmour’s soaring guitar parts and more pleasant vocal tone. I like the rawness of Waters’ voice on this record, though – he sounds like a broken man, and it makes his overwhelming contempt and disappointment for the world as we know it now seem less haughty or preachy. He spent all those years in Pink Floyd being the most successful Cassandra in the history of music, but he doesn’t sound remotely pleased to have his dim opinion of humanity be validated by a post-Brexit and Trump world. “Déjà Vu,” an acoustic ballad that perhaps deliberately echoes “Mother” and “Wish You Were Here,” sounds more fragile and miserable than either. It gestures towards grandeur, but Waters sounds too weary to get there, and is too disillusioned to allow an easy catharsis. It’s as sad and lovely, but also tragic and pitiful.

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