Roger Waters unveils album release date and a preview of new material
Roger Waters has revealed the release date of his eagerly anticipated new album ‘Is This the Life We Really Want?"
The Pink Floyd legend will release the Nigel Godrich (Radiohead, Sir Paul McCartney) produced record on Friday 19th May. It’s his first proper rock solo record since ‘Amused to Death’ a quarter of a century ago and the follow-up to 2005’s critically panned opera ‘Ça Ira’.
Having released an 11-second snippet of music back in January, Roger has continued to titillate his fans by now releasing a further 33 seconds of material together with footage of himself, his band and Nigel in the studio.
Cast your corneas on the video here:
> "Is This the Life We Really Want?" - the new album from @rogerwaters - Available May 19th - https://t.co/1f2rcamerC pic.twitter.com/1F4ki76t9V > > — Roger Waters (@rogerwaters) March 2, 2017
Last autumn, Roger revealed that the album is a concept record of sorts partially born out of a radio play he had written.
“I had written a long, meandering piece that was a radio play with about a dozen songs in it,” Roger explained to Rolling Stone. “It was the story of an old Irishman who is babysitting.
“The kid wakes up. He goes in to look after the kid, and it's his granddaughter. She is having a nightmare, and the nightmare is someone is killing all the children. He says, ‘No, they're not. They haven't killed any children since the Troubles in Northern Ireland.’
“And the kid says, ‘Not here, Grandpa. Over there.’ The grandfather promises they will go on a quest to find the answer to this question: Why are they killing all the children? It is a fundamentally important question.”
Revealing what other themes it explores, Roger added: “I've also been falling in love, deeply in love. So the record is really about love – which is what all of my records have been about, in fact. It's pondering not just why we are killing the children. It's also the question of how do we take these moments of love – if we are granted any in our lives – and allow that love to shine on the rest of existence, on others.”
Quizzed as to what’s left of the original radio play on the record, Roger added: “Oh, it's been completely thrown out. The radio play will be made. I will make it, because I love it. But it's a separate issue – it overlaps what we do.
“Nigel's really good. He said to me, ‘People always want to do these long records. How long was The Dark Side of the Moon?’ I said 38 minutes. But there are no constraints on records now because nobody pays you anything for them. So everything's off the table.”