Roger Waters – Is This The Life We Really Want?
Joe Siegler
- AllMyVinyl #144
- Band: Roger Waters
- Album Title: Is This The Life We Really Want?
- Release Date: 2 Jun 2017
- Date purchased: 12 Aug 2023
- Location purchased: Discogs marketplace
- Color of vinyl: black
- Number of discs: 2
- Links: [ Wikipedia | Discogs | Band Website | Complete album on Youtube ]
This is an album that frustrated the hell out of me. I was waiting for years and years for this to come out. It finally came out, and it basically laid an egg. I was so disappointed when Roger delivered this album in 2017. The main reason is because the album before this (1992’s “Amused to Death”) was for me the best thing BY FAR he’s done solo, and also better than quite a few Pink Floyd albums (both with and without Roger). Amused to Death is simply stellar. If you don’t know the album, you should go get it. I’m raving about this a bit because I wanted to set up my disappointment. Roger simply stopped recording after this. He never toured Amused to Death, which was also a disappointment. The next time he got back into the studio was in the mid 2000’s for the release of 2005’s “Ça Ira“. It was an opera. Not a rock album. I got it because it’s Waters, but yeah, it wasn’t for me. Way more time passed, and we still didn’t get an album. Or even an inkling that something was coming.
Finally in 2017, we got word there was another Waters solo album coming out that summer. So I was excited, as I was still regularly listening to Amused to Death. Waters’ solo albums are underrated for sure. Then we got this album – the first single came out and I quite liked it. And that’s where it stopped. The rest of the album to me was shockingly boring and uninteresting to me. I was shocked – it went instantly to the bottom of my list of favorite Waters albums.
I saw Waters on that tour, and the couple of songs he did from this album were decent enough – but he also had a big visual to go with the songs, so that may have helped, but I still felt the album was a disappointment. I just let it sit, I basically stopped listening to it, more or less gave up on it. Something that I never thought I would do with a Roger Waters album. This has nothing to do with his politics or his public statements on various issues – it was just as a piece of music I found it uninteresting and didn’t care. I did buy it new on CD when it came out, and I still have that copy, but it’s filed away with all my other physical CD’s. Haven’t played the physical CD in a very long time, probably near the first year it was out.
Then after Covid happened, I revisited the album out of the blue after not listening to it for several years, and I found I enjoyed far more than I remembered. It’s not like it’s some super great album, now, but I found more to like than the one song I did, plus two others that were OK. So in the fall of 2023 I found a copy at a decent price on Discogs marketplace so I snapped it up. It’s still never gonna be a top Waters album as lot of it is filled with Roger’s famed “talking singing” style. I’d probably rank it above Radio KAOS (but not by much tho), but it’s still not his best. Still, I did like it enough now to want it on vinyl, so here goes…
Might be be the best pic I ever took at a concert.
When We Were Young – A short “non song” intro to the first real track. This is 1:40 and no band, it’s just Roger talking with minimal instrumentation. Initially it’s muffled and totally unrecognizable, but Roger’s voice slowly fades in. Most if it I can’t understand just listening to it (my tinnitus maybe), so I broke it out a second time on Apple Music, and there are synchronized lyrics in here, most of which I had a hard time hearing even with AirPods in use. Some of the lyrics say “Before the advent of pubescent awe and confusion, knickers thick, pasty in the roar of adolescence’s dawn. How innocent and cruel”. Appears to be a commentary on perception of youth? It ends with the line “Who gives a fuck, it’s never really over”, which to some extent is probably an accurate observation of all of us. It leads directly into…
Deja Vu – The first song, and one of the singles. Deja Vu was something Roger did live on Stephen Colbert to promote the album (video embedded below on my blog page). This song starts off with minimal instrumentation, which builds on what happened in the first “song” on the album. When it was new, I felt it was too slow, but grew to like the song. I mean, nobody’s music I listen to would have written lyrics like this.. “If I had been God, I would have rearranged the veins in the face to make them more resistant to alcohol and less prone to aging”. I mean, yeah? I’m not entirely sure what the point of the lyrics are, but I really did end up enjoying the tune – nice orchestration in the back, and Roger ends up actually singing after awhile vs the “speaking singing” he does a lot in his later years. He talks about Romans killing children, drones spying on people, women baking in a kitchen, lyrically it’s all over the place. I fully admit when it was new, I didn’t care for this, but now I really do – it works for me well. Don’t know what the fuck it’s about, but I enjoyed the song. I actually ended up playing this twice in a row, which surprised me.
The Last Refugee – This one has a very Pink Floyd sound to it at the start as it’s a lot of sound effects. Sounds like something Floyd might have done in the early 70’s with a piano sound mixed with sound effects. Musically and lyrically though I never got this song. Not then – not now. Perhaps someone reading this would care to educate me here, but I’m not sure what this is about – even with the music video he made for it (I believe the only one from the album).
If memory serves, some music from this was used at the start of the 2017 live show where this picture was shown on screen for quite awhile. It wasn’t static, either, but mostly looked like this picture. It’s probably backed up by these lyrics from the end of the song.. “you’ll find my child down by the shore digging around for a chain or a bone, searching the sand for a relic washed up by the sea – the last refugee”. It would fit what my memory says was happening visually in the scene presented during pre-concert time here.
Picture That – If you’ve paid attention to Roger’s lyrics over the decades, there’s three things that stick out. He writes about his father, he’s got a lot of political commentary, and he has lists. Boy does Roger love lists in his lyrics. I can point out examples all over the place, from Pink Floyd and his solo records. This song has more of that. Until we get to the chorus, just about every line of lyric in the song starts with “Picture….” and then lists something. It starts off innocent (picture your finger pushing the doorbell), moves on other stuff that you go “Uh, OK?”.. “Picture prosthetics in Afghanistan”, then he gets into “angry Roger” territory where everything has an f bomb in it, ending up with “Picture a leader with no fucking brains” – which if you saw this live is Donald Trump. Waters has never been shy about his opinions, and this song is not shy about that. There’s also a line of lyrics “follow me filming myself at the show on a phone from a seat in the very front row”. It amused me that at the show I saw they found someone doing exactly that. Basically this is a list of things Roger doesn’t like. Musically this one worked for me from first listen, and was one of the handful of songs I liked even when I was disappointed in the entire album. I think the teenager that still lives in me somewhere liked the anger of the song conceptually. I also got a kick out of what he did with this song visually live. The song ends the lyrics with a little over two minutes to go, and the rest is a jam, that has some more music than the rest of the song prior oddly. I kind of liked the short jam there in this part. I wonder if the jam was meant to be something else as the entire song is 6:48 and is the longest on the album. If it stopped before the jam, it would be of the same length as everything else.
Broken Bones – One of Roger’s favorite subjects turns up in the lyrics here – “World War II”. But this is one where I didn’t pay any attention to the lyrics, I enjoyed the orchestration for this. It starts off slow – just an acoustic guitar. There’s a few peaks where the song moves past its general slow/acoustic feel. I don’t always like slow songs like this, but this one I did. This is one of those “feel” songs. You’re not gonna tap your toes to it, or really get up and dance. If you just relax yourself, it’s got that “wash over you” feel to the music. I found I enjoyed this song more when I didn’t try and figure it out, and just took it in.
Is this The Life We Really Want? – This was one I definitely overlooked when it was new. I found this worked better with headphones, I could hear some of the bass runs, which really helps the song out to me. I particularly love what is done musically before any of the lyrics start. It’s got a great fuzzy bass sound at parts. Roger’s later work isn’t known for being overly musical – I suspect a lot of that has to do with not working with David Gilmour anymore. Waters can write a tune, but his stuff is definitely better with Dave’s input. Still, he can write a good tune on his own from time to time. Oddly this one works for me. It shouldn’t, as it’s a different sound, but I love the bass work in this track. Lyrically it’s another “list” song. And oddly his vocals are mixed in the background more once the rest of the band pops up. An odd choice as if you don’t have a lyrics with you, it’ll be darned hard to understand the lyrics. Or at least this tinnitus affected listener can’t.
Bird in a Gale – This song starts off with sound effects of a phone call. Something that’s been in Floyd music a lot – I first heard that back on The Wall. In fact, sound effects are in this song a lot. It’s got an odd musical vibe to it. I can’t say this one does a lot for me. I did like it in headphones, as with Roger the aural landscape in one’s ears never stays in one place. But that’s as much as I really cared for with this track. Not my favorite.
The Most Beautiful Girl – The second longest song on the album at 6:09. It’s just kind of there. I didn’t care for this, but I didn’t dislike it either. Not quite sure what this is supposed to be about. At first I thought it was something innocent like the Statue of Liberty, and when I googled around to see what was going on, I found this from Roger about the song.. “But on the new record, it’s about Obama’s drone warfare. The lyrics have been adapted to include the death of a specific Yemeni girl in a cruise missile attack. So the story is new, the ideas are new, but they all fit around the music of the song.”” So… Uh, OK? I know it’s the kind of thing Roger writes about, but I don’t see this in the lyrics. Song’s OK. Don’t hate it, but it doesn’t do a lot for me either.
Smell the Roses – Then we get to this. This is easily the best song in the album – BY FAR. it’s the most like the regular Pink Floyd we know. It was the first single, released a couple of weeks before the album came out, so I had REALLY digested the fuck out of the song before the album came out, and when the rest of the album came out and nothing else was like this, was the main driver of my disappointment. This is a good faster paced song (for Waters, anyway). Had a nice beat. Lyrically it’s Roger pleading with us to pay attention to what’s going on in the world around us. Musically it’s the most “alive” of anything on this album – we don’t have the “speaking singing” that Roger is mostly known for. There’s a break in the middle where it gets noticeably slower, but the main beat picks up again. I quite like this song, both musically and lyrically. It’s my favorite not just because it’s the most like old Floyd, but because it’s a good song. Shame nothing else rises to this level on the album.
It kind of reminds me in a way of Geoff Tate – late of Queensryche. In 2015 he put out an album called “The Key” (under the Operation: Mindcrime band name). It was a smilingly good track – the lead single, really damn great track, and superior to everything else on the album. When nothing else on that album sounded like that, it led me to be really disappointed with the album as a whole. I feel the exact same way about this album and “Smell the Roses”. Great killer opening single, but nothing else on the album sounds like this. That’s a shame.
One thing that I wanted to mention. Waters has always has this ability to work really weird sounding or just generally LONG words into his lyrics which you wouldn’t think someone would work into rock lyrics. This song does that for me with the line of lyric that says “Wake up and smell the phosphorous”. I just like the way phosphorus sounds from an aural standpoint when sung here.
It’s at this point that I don’t remember anything else. When I was listening to this a bunch when the album was new, I’d check out because Smell the Roses was over – that’s even if I bothered to listen to this point, usually I would listen to just “Picture That” & “Smell the Roses” and be done with the album.
Wait For Her – Another song where I couldn’t figure out what was going on just from the song itself. Roger has a video for this, so I watched that, and it didn’t help either. The video is the band playing in a room interspersed with video of a woman putting on makeup by a mirror, getting dressed and then walking out of a room (with some crying in the middle). I’m usually good with picking up what message Roger is trying to portray, but not here. Perhaps I’m being too dense on this, but is the song being simply literal? We’re supposed to wait on the women in our life? Something else? I’m confused. Musically, the song doesn’t venture too far beyond just a piano and Roger except at the end when some guitar kicks in. Lyrically I’m bloody confused, tho.
Oceans Apart – This is a short 1:09 piece that seems to exist as a postscript to Wait for Her. It’s got the same acoustic guitar sound and one short verse of lyrics which seem to be a coda to the last song. Wonder why it was split in two pieces.
Part of Me Died – … and then it keeps going into the final song – all like it’s one long ass song split into three pieces. Between the three of them it’s just under 10 minutes long. I wonder why it’s constructed this way. We’re back to lists of things in the lyrics, although musically it sounds like the same last few minutes we’ve been listening to. Yeah, I think the album after Smell the Roses can be skipped, and probably was the nail in the coffin of why I felt the way I did about the album in the past. It still doesn’t do anything for me me though – the last three songs combined really felt like three chapters of the same song, just fragmented into three distinct titles. Yeah, pass.
As I listened to this album, I was attempting to piece together the concept, as Roger’s albums always have concepts. Perhaps this is part of what turned me off at the start, because I couldn’t figure that out, and I never dug into it. I read around a bit today to see what the deal with that was. Turns out there isn’t one. Roger was convinced to do an album that didn’t have a concept. I wonder if I knew that at the start if it would have affected my enjoyment of the album back then.
If I had to attach anything to the entire album, it’s Roger’s being annoyed at the general apathy of people in general. This is (for me) borne out most in the last line of lyric from the title track of this album. Those lyrics are… “It is because we all stood by, silent and indifferent”. In some ways that fits thematically with his (fucking brilliant) solo album titled “Amused to Death” which speaks about how we’ve just become mental zombies due to our over-reliance to technology and entertainment. The title track of this album would work on the Amused to Death album, no problem.
Overall, this album is weird for me. I so SO wanted to love it when the album came out because “Amused to Death” was such a highlight. Then this came out and I was like “We waited TWENTY FIVE FUCKING YEARS FOR THIS?!?” If you’re going to listen to anything from this album, I’d go with “Deja Vu”, “Picture That”, and “Smell the Roses”. If just one, then Roses. Beyond those three, I think you have to be a Waters hardcore fan to get into this one. I do love Roger’s work with Floyd of course, and have enjoyed his solo work too. This one I struggle with, and I am predisposed to liking what he’s done.
I mean come on Roger, you have a better album in you than this. In reading about this album today as background research, he talks in this Rolling Stone interview about a proper Waters concept album he had written before this stuff. He mentions that he’ll get around to releasing that album too. However in 2025, he’s 81 years old, and it’s been 8 years since THIS album came out. I wonder if that will still happen.
I just hope he has another (better) studio album left in him because this one would be a disappointing way to go out from a recording standpoint.
