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SGB Music Limited3
Dark Side of the Moon Redux
Roger Waters, vocals and synth; Gus Seyffert, co-producer and various instruments; Joey Waronker, Jonathan Wilson, Johnny Shepherd, Via Mardot, Azniv Korkejian, Gabe Noel, Jon Carin and Robert Walter, various instruments
SGB Music Limited, 2023
Roger Waters is still kicking around in the hometown of his musical legacy with Dark Side of the Moon Redux, a 50th anniversary re-recording of Pink Floyd’s iconic album. As evidenced by the music, though, Waters does not intend to perfectly recreate his masterpiece, but rather reflect on its themes with the benefit of hindsight.
In the place of the 1973 album’s hypnotic progressive rock ballad is a mellow spoken word experiment that emphasizes the gravelly nature of the 80-year-old’s voice. He tells illustrative stories and anecdotes over instrumentals that wistfully mimic the original tracks. Since Waters is the only musician from Pink Floyd to reappear on this album, the style has a bold and egocentric built-in assumption that listeners will be satisfied with a prioritization of Waters’ visions over those of the band. Unfortunately, this concept only works on some tracks.
Time is an example of Waters missing the mark. Over seven minutes, he cuts some lines short as though he can’t continue singing. This seems to serve as a realization of the lines “The sun is the same in a relative way, but you’re older/Shorter of breath, and one day closer to death.” He also remains monotone throughout the track. While these are narratively satisfying choices, they undercut a lot of the song’s power.
The same can be said of The Great Gig in the Sky, which trades heart-wrenching piano accompaniment and pained singing for auto-tuned humming, recordings of birds chirping, and a depressing story about the death of American poet Donald Hall. The build up at the beginning of the song is practically non-existent, and yet the payoff still manages to be anti-climactic.
Us and Them is one of the album’s saving graces. Waters opts for melodic vocals above a trance-like string arrangement and powerful percussions, with synth and guitar riffs that replace the original interlude and saxophone. The song stays the same lyrically, perhaps suggesting that war goes on no matter how things change.
The commentary in Waters’ rendition of Brain Damage is also apt. It starts with him laughing at the idea of re-recording Dark Side of the Moon, as if the concept has been pitched to him so many times that it’s finally driven him mad. Fitting for a song that makes direct references to lunatics. Waters uses a slower pace and introduces a soft organ and sweeping strings to imitate the performance style of a religious sermon. Combined with higher pitched, distorted backing vocals that accompany the choruses (“And if the band you’re in starts playing different tunes/I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon”), the track almost feels like a sendoff to the late band members of Pink Floyd. The song’s intimacy is a welcome surprise that more than makes up for the less successful tracks on the album. The vocal style carries into Eclipse, yielding a trippy harmonic effect that offers a satisfying conclusion to an otherwise mixed experience.
