The Wall (1979)

The other day I saw a social media post asking about albums worth listening to in their entirety, from beginning to end. I was surprised to find this double-LP behemoth among the most frequently mentioned, not least because I had spent the summer playing it that way and found myself crawling up the walls, so to speak. “Dreary blob of audio,” I noted one day. The other odd factor for me was that I never had listened to it that way in the first place—I never owned it (nor Tusk by Fleetwood Mac, for that matter, the other big burger from that autumn). I liked “Another Brick in the Wall” and “Comfortably Numb” enough that I did not turn them away when they came up on the radio. In retrospect this is where the Roger Waters takeover was complete. Pink Floyd had looked to me like a bloat job anyway since at least Dark Side of the Moon, though I’ve since found some (not a lot of) interest in Wish You Were Here and Animals. Waters wrote every bit of the music on The Wall and also scripted the freaking 1982 movie directed by Alan Parker (Midnight Express, The Commitments). I saw it when it was new and it left me, er, uncomfortably numb from the assault of bleak paranoia. The grit felt ground into grime. The album is just a lot of weak sauce. I wonder if anyone mentioned to Waters that “Goodbye Blue Sky” scans way too close to “Goodbye Ruby Tuesday” in the clinch of the chorus. But the song also has some effective moments of tension, so all right. “Vera” harks to Vera Lynn, the iconic World War II UK singer who hit with “White Cliffs of Dover” and especially “We’ll Meet Again,” for a weird-toned moment of genuine nostalgia (I think) in this mess. “The Trial” strains for the Kurt Weill note. And I don’t know about you, let alone Waters, but I do not find children singing “We don’t need no education” to be at all a comforting sentiment. The only saving grace about this puffed-up operatic strudel may be that the libretto is essentially incoherent (except the occasional lines and dramatic readings about public school failings). You have to study The Wall, including a look at the movie, to get the heavy bring-down vibe. My recommendation is don’t study it. In fact, I think you can skip it altogether—I know, 50 years too late again. The one bright spot musically is David Gilmour who steps in, seemingly only when Waters allows it, and chips in some very enjoyable guitar solos and the best music here.