Songfacts®:

• Of the 10 tracks on Rattle That Lock, two feature lyrics by David Gilmour as well as the music. This is one of them.
  
  Gilmour explained the song's background to The Sun. "That's just a portrait of a day that I spent with my mother before she died," he said. "She had dementia caused by a mini stroke and it's a fairly literal description of moments that happened. But I thought that if they resonated with me, they'd resonate with other people too."
• Gilmour told Mojo: "Faces of Stone is a strange one, 'cos I had a very difficult relationship with my mother. I wasn't an adoring son by any stretch of the imagination. But there is a sort of element of wanting to make a little peace with various memories I have of her and myself."
• David Gilmour elaborated on the song's personal story in a statement tied in with the video's release: "Towards the end of my mother's life, when she was suffering from dementia, there was a brief crossover period of about nine months, when she was alive and my daughter was newly born: this song is a musing on that time. Specifically it refers to a walk in the park where my mother was 'seeing' pictures, or 'faces of stone', hanging in the trees."