Echoes of Floyd: Waters Sings Powerfully for the Lonely

When Pink Floyd toured the stadiums of the world in the late ‘80s and mid-’90s without principal musical architect Roger Waters, the English group sounded lifeless. The notes were all there, the inflated pigs were there, but the heart was gone.

Waters’ performance Wednesday at the Universal Amphitheatre made it easy to see why his 1986 departure damaged Floyd irreparably. The show illustrated the extent to which Waters’ operatic rock has influenced generations of British musicians, from the conceptual atmospherics of Massive Attack to the gloomy vision of Radiohead.

Backed by a seamless 10-piece band, singer-bassist Waters delivered an effective mix of both Floyd songs and material from his three moody solo albums, while slides of Floyd’s symbol-laden iconography were projected on a screen and an old war movie played silently on a television set.

You need a passionate voice to sing convincingly about alienation, and although he is a cerebral lyricist, Waters certainly has what it takes to convey the loneliness of a technologically advanced but emotionally undernourished society. Like a painful shriek resonating from the depths of a traumatized childhood, his voice charged the old Floyd material that dominated the concert with a gutsy sense of purpose.

* Roger Waters plays Saturday at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, 8808 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine, 8 p.m. $21.50-$56.50. (949) 855-2863.