Part of the problem for A Momentary Lapse of Reason was the album rollout. Irrespective of behind-the-scenes problems with Roger Waters and his departure from Pink Floyd, the music wasn’t quite cutting from the same quality cloth as before. That is not because David Gilmour was installed as the new frontman. His work while heading up the band is still of interest, and while The Division Bell is vastly superior, there are moments of interest from his first album while leading Pink Floyd. The Dogs of War, one of the singles set to promote A Momentary Lapse of Reason, still feels like proof of what Waters has said for decades. He was the songwriter, Gilmour was the instrumental mastermind. That pairing is a rarity, and the friction has worn down the pair, rarely working together again. Remove one from this push and pull style of creativity, and you have a clear imbalance. You can hear that on The Dogs of War.
Gilmour flexes his vocal and instrumental muscles here. The Dogs of War is stronger when isolated from A Momentary Lapse of Reason than it is when paired with the rest of the album. Had the band become a singles outfit after Waters’ departure, they may have been onto something. Startling and sudden commentaries of the world around them, the ongoing cultural decline as they adapt new instrumentals and contemporary flourishes into their work. It’d have been tinged with an irony and paranoia which Waters would use in his solo works. But then it’d also sound like Waters’ solo works. That is the opposite of what Gilmour wanted for Pink Floyd, naturally. There’s an acceptance of lesser material from the band here because the audience is set to grow regardless of quality. Gilmour keeps an anger alive through The Dogs of War, though its target is unclear.
This, along with many songs from Waters’ Amused to Death release, is an example of why Gilmour and Waters worked so well together. Their differing world views and styles formed a complementary sound. Paranoid putdowns of the past from Waters were paired with a hopeful, wavy feel from Gilmour. Together it was golden, but with Gilmour trying to form both moods on The Dogs of War, it loses its way. It’s still one of the better moments to come from A Momentary Lapse of Reason, though it is spending time with it in isolation, which offers this. As a preceding song to One Slip, it feels out of place. An angry single to coax people in, to have people assume Pink Floyd still had their pulse on the feelings of a society in spiral. Rip it from the album and it has a worrying but brilliant accuracy.
What we do for cash in desperate times is nobody’s business, though it now seems the rare days of haggling and deception, as noted by Gilmour on The Dogs of War, are now the everyday. Pink Floyd at their best were commenting on three tenses of life, the past, present, and future, somehow thrown together. They would lose their grip on that long before Waters left the band, but The Dogs of War is a sudden return to the sinister-sounding style which would have the band offer messages of warning. Gilmour tackles a song which Waters would be proud of writing. What was a weak part of the album is, in fact, the strongest piece from A Momentary Lapse of Reason. A blistering guitar solo and the backing vocalists sounding like unattached voices, screaming into the voice of a fractured world, it’s a marvellous piece of work.
