At the start of this Redux’s version of Brain Damage, Roger Waters asks: “Why don’t we re-record [the album]?” before answering his own question: “He’s gone mad.”
As it turns out, the actual record – timed for the 50th anniversary of The Dark Side’s release is fine: neither a massive gutting of the original nor a slavish copy. It opens with Waters intoning the lyrics of Free Four from Pink Floyd’s Obscured By Clouds, and takes it from there. Time now sounds like a boulder rolled up a hill, weary and aged. Brain Damage and Us And Them are half-crooned and very effective.
The music of On The Run is now the backing track for Waters reciting a story about good and evil, as is Money, sung in the voice of a distracted bear. The Great Gig In The Sky is Waters’s tribute to a deceased friend, the poet Donald Hall.
There is also, apparently, a bonus 13-minute original composition, but you'll have to buy the album to hear that. Redux is well thought out, and it works.
