Roger Waters Set to Release ‘Lockdown Sessions’ Album of Pink Floyd and Solo Recordings

Less than a month after releasing a new, more somber version of Pink Floyd’s iconic The Wall track, “Comfortably Numb 2022,” Roger Waters is compiling a collection of music he recorded in lockdown during the pandemic for a new album.

“There will be an album coming out, a new album called The Lockdown Sessions,” said Waters. “I’ve given all these things away. They’re all out there, anybody can find them on the internet.”

Recorded from May 2020 through 2022, the album features various Pink Floyd classics recorded by Waters at home, in addition to his own solo material.

Several of the tracks, which Waters previously shared on social media and YouTube, include “Vera,” “Bring the Boys Back Home,” and “Mother,” from Pink Floyd’s 1979 album, The Wall, in addition to “The Gunners Dream” and “Two Suns in the Sunset,” off the band’s 12th album The Final Cut, released in 1983. 

The album will include all remaining songs recorded by Waters and remastered, along with his recently released “Comfortably Numb 2022.” Recorded during the U.S. leg of his This Is Not A Drill Tour, “Comfortably Numb 2022” was produced by Waters and Gus Seyffert, who also contributes bass, synth, and percussion on the track.

Running exactly two and a half minutes longer than the original “Comfortably Numb,” which clocked in at six minutes and 22 seconds, Waters’ new version runs nearly nine minutes and is accompanied by a video set in a dystopian world of blacked-out imagery of crowds of motionless and faceless people.

“During lockdown, I made a demo of a new version of ‘Comfortably Numb’ as an opener for our new show This Is Not A Drill,” said Waters in a statement. “I pitched it a whole step down, in A Minor, to make it darker and arranged it with no solos, except over the outro chord sequence, where there is a heartrendingly beautiful female vocal solo from Shanay Johnson, one of our new singers.” 

Hinting at a possible release date for The Lockdown Sessions, Waters posted a cryptic tweet showing black and white footage of a deserted street with the title “streaming everywhere December 9th.” 

Waters is also working on a new album, which will include his recent single, “The Bar,” another track he recorded during the pandemic. He will resume his This Is Not a Drill tour in 2023 with 40 shows across 14 European countries, kicking off in Lisbon, Portugal on March 17 and wrapping up on June 10 in Manchester, England.

Photo: Franco Origlia/Getty Images