The last great prog rock album?

Prog Rock is tedious, self-indulgent, pretentious noodling crap.  Punk/New Wave that killed it off is crude aggressive moronic shouting shite.   If you lived the 1970s, both or either views could (were) be held… But it was also possible to be into them both.  I was. 

Prog rock morphed out of 1960s psychedelia and was characterised by the concept album, with its central narrative theme, often fantasy, science fiction, pixies and toadstools, along with a sprinkling of dope-induced genius. 

Pink Floyd were ‘tall poppies’ on the scene.   Their last album, The Final Cut, came out in 1983 in arguably inauspicious circumstances just prior to a car-crash band rift, and with the band apparently not on speakies.  One original member, the keyboardist Richard Wright, had already haule out, being, it is said, no longer able to work with Roger Waters whose project The Final Cut self-evidently was -being conceived, written and largely sung by him.  It contained several tracks that were rejects from the previous, blockbuster album The Wall.

Throughout its creation there was apparently rancour and ill feeling.  Following its release, and subsequent interactions with m’learned friends, Roger Waters left the band to pursue a successful solo career, producing three further albums.  The remaining band -rejoined by Richard Wright- went on to create two further, also successful Pink Floyd Albums

On this basis The Final Cut ought to have been at best a fizzling-out final whimper, or at worst a shitshow.  Many people think so.

But moving from the hopefully mostly objective to the purely subjective, I happen to think it a superb album and that many of the tracks, especially The Gunner’s Dream, and Two Suns in the Sunset are sheer brilliance.  The former can read as poetry.

The subsequent rift benefited neither party, I think.  Roger Waters’  three solo albums were all (subjective again) brilliant, especially the epicly miserable Amused to Death, but they would all have been taken to another level with the distinctive Floyd sound.  Waters assembled highly talented musicians but they could not better the unique combination of Wright’s keyboards, Mason’s drums and Gilmour’s guitar.

The subsequent non-Waters Pink Floyd albums: had all the familiar ‘Floyd components but without the angst/anger/inspiration of Waters: they seemed to me to be “Pink Floyd by numbers”

The rump Floyd took the band’s form, and Waters took the band’s content.  Both lost by it.

But The Final Cut, whatever else it is, is a concept album.  One performed by arguably the greatest ever progressive rock band.  It came out at the end of that band, and it came out deep into the post-punk 80s when Prog had become something of a joke.   But it is a serious and brilliant piece. The last great prog rock album?

Another characteristic of the prog rock album was the gatefold cover. I had thought to include an illustration of the cover of The Final Cut but being new to this I am not sure of the reproduction regs, so instead I include below a gatefold from The Crypts of Lieberkühn’s “Psychographic Telefields”  I know the ex-leader singer and he wouldn’t mind.  Largely because he doesn't exist.