Roger Waters: Dark Side Redux

It’s not every day we get to hear a reimagined classic rock epic—but on the other hand, it’s not every day we want to. This underscores the predicament Roger Waters faces with his enigmatic Redux revision of Dark Side of the Moon. The infamously contentious Waters has never lacked ego—as well as the courage to follow his own vision—and Dark Side Redux  reaffirms that. With the gentle, opening crawl through “Speak to Me” and “Breathe,” Waters’ brooding baritone sets the tone for the album while delivering spoken word lyrics from “Free Four,” an early Floyd tune about the futility inherent in life, and these spoken word tone poems take up a lot of room on the record. The original’s melodic psychedelia gets subsumed by hushed, world-weary songs that inhabit a blasted, atmospheric landscape. Some of the arrangements are almost unrecognizable and thus weakened, like the deconstructed “Money” and “Great Gig in the Sky,” but “Time” and “Us and Them” retain their anthemic qualities. Though not a necessary remake, Redux provides a compelling update to these seminal songs written by a 29-year-old Waters—now revised by the same 80-year-old man.