My personal favorite is “Broken Bones,” an instrumentally building track highlighting a key theme of the entire record: Mistress Liberty. “Picture That” begins with eerie guitar strings and bass before Waters sings in a pissed off tone, elevating the already biting lyrics, “ Picture a leader with no f*#king brains.” But alas, sure there are some tracks that stand on their own however, such as “The Last Refugee” in which Waters shared during an interview with Dan Rather the idea for the song: that there being a last true refugee is fascinating yet daunting to him, and was something he needed to express on Is This the Life We Really Want?. The highlights of this album are, well, the entire piece. Sonically Is This the Life We Really Want? also echoes The Wall by an extremely similar vocal loop in “Bird In a Gale” is heard in “Hey You” found within the ’79 release, as well as a lyric throwback connecting both albums: “bleeding hearts,” symbolizing nothing has truly changed in all the years distancing the records, only a growing acceptance of violence and immoral behavior enacted by world governments and the religiously or politically zealot. With Waters’ new album it sounds like Pink is back, this time in the current world state, older and still cynical, but this time ’round he totes a sad acceptance that even if he were to build a wall from humanity’s darkness, it would do nothing to change things. In a lot of ways Is This the Life We Really Want? is similar to The Wall, the Waters-fronted era Pink Floyd concept album about isolation and a metaphorical wall built within protagonist Pink’s mind. No other musician has the exact fortitude and spirit to capture the true evils of today and embody them in a remarkably enjoyable creative expression quite like Roger Waters, and I am ecstatic he has done it again. Is This the Life We Really Want? is filled with rich instrumentation varying from stringed arrangements, multiple guitars, keyboards, piano, tight percussion and bass, as well as sound collages put together by producer Nigel Godrich, Is This the Life We Really Want? leaves nothing behind. This record is exactly what the world needs to hear, it rips the greedy flesh right off of its bones, exposing the world and its leaders as inflated anti-humanitarians leaving us disgraced at the cruelty we allowed to happen for the sake of currency and power. Roger Waters has done with this new album what the majority of other political reactionary music releases (Neil Young’s Peace Trail, or Father John Misty’s Pure Comedy, for instance) have fallen short of: capturing the sinister tone of it all as well as diving into harsh truths within cold and naked lyricism. Emerging from a 25 year music release absence, Rogers Waters has finally returned with an astounding conceptual masterpiece entitled Is This the Life We Really Want?

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