Comfortably Numb is a solid gold classic for us, a song we revisit time and time again, so when Roger Waters released a 2022 reimagined version we felt trepidation. His desire to remove all the guitar solos felt like an attempt to erase David Gilmore, and yet when we heard it there was something fascinating about it.

In the world of the internet you often have to make a quick take, keep up with the scrolling news, but we didn’t do that. We gave it time, and space, and let it grow. We let the where’s the solo part of listening drop away, we went through Christmas where the vibes began to match, and now a month and a half later we feel able to post our opinion that it’s still, in its new form, just as incredible a track, for a different world.

Here’s Roger explaining what and why: “Before lockdown I had been working on a demo of a new version of ‘Comfortably Numb’ as an opener to our new show “This Is Not A Drill”. I pitched it a whole step down, in A Minor, to make it darker and arranged it with no solos, except over the outro, where there is a heartrendingly beautiful vocal solo from one of our new sisters Shanay Johnson.It’s intended as a wakeup call, and a bridge towards a kinder future with more talking to strangers, either in “The Bar” or just “Passing in the Street” and less slaughter “In Some Foreign Field.”Here it is. Love R.”