The Wall CD Review

1979, Pink Floyd.

The album is currently celebrating its 30th anniversary repackaging/reappraisal etc.
To be frank, I have a few "issues" with it.

Production values are second-to-none (borne out by the huge disco/rock crossover single hit that was Another Brick in the Wall Part 2)...
And there are some truly marvellous songs for the picking also...my favourites would be Hey You, Comfortably Numb and Mother.
The above stand alone quite freely of the narrative weight that comes with the concept album (movie/stage show/circus/glasnost event-near-you), and I am willing to opine that the narrative/atmosphere/character songs that we find here (e.g. Another Brick) in balance add little to the thematic or even emotional thrust of the concept.
In fact, some songs muddy the waters or encourage a bit of aimless bathos for its own sake - Empty Spaces is a prime example here.

So, far from perfection, we have yet another brave but flawed conceptual work which is to be applauded for its grand concept, but chastised for its over-reaching, over-preaching self-indulgence.

Imagine if, after the already extravagant (5 songs about) "Animals", PF had flicked out a short EP with 3 or 4 of the above emotional crackers on it...maybe that ol' rock star wall would have crumbled a lot faster than Roger Waters could have hoped for...

5/10.