ANIMALS

Animals is my favourite Pink Floyd album. Before I heard this album I had already fallen in love with 'The Dark Side of the Moon' and 'Wish You Were Here' and had given a few listens to 'The Wall' as my dad had them all on vinyl since there release. So by now, I was a dedicated Pink Floyd fan, and the 'Fab four' as they are so called, was there at my disposal for a long time. The last album I listened to out of the four was 'Animals', I don't know why, but I almost felt afraid to listen to it incase it spoilt the clean sheet the other three had made. When I did take it out, I sat and just admired the cover art for a while, it seemed so smokey and inviting, I was now excited. After my first listen I thought, well that was different, and I still feel the exact same way today. The album has an unbelievable atmosphere, the smoky imagery on the cover fitted perfectly with the sort of 'smoky' music inside.It seemed a little dark to me, but that only enhanced the exitement, the album was perfect. The music is so rich here, every second of the music sounds like it belongs on this album, and nowhere else, it should always be played in its entirity.

'Pigs On The Wing' bookends the album just as 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond' had on the album before it 'Wish You Were Here', only, it's slightly shorter than Shine On. A simple, yet fantastic tune and right from the start Waters lyrics grab you. The acoustic guitar only plays a simple few chords, but it counts, it sounds wonderful, it leads perfectly into 'Dogs', the albums seventeen minute epic that takes up the rest of side one. The acoustic guitar at the beginning, Wright's jazzy tinged sounding keyboards and Gilmour's slightly hoarse vocals create a wonderful texture that seems to run throughout the whole album, the simple switch to Waters on vocals give an ever increasing darkness to the piece, he sounds malevolent, unfriendly, and his words are powerful enough to make it seem like he's shouting them in your face. Waters views of society are so relevant to the world today that this could have been recorded yesterday, I don't want to go into too much detail about the concept of the album as it has been said before countless times before but it's still a message that has a lot truth and relevancy today, and probably always will.

Side two has two more classic floyd tracks 'Pigs (three different ones)' and 'Sheep', both have some excellent music. 'Pigs' ends with one of Gilmour's greatest guitar solos and there is a great mood throughout the track, it moves slowly, but it's still aggressive. 'Sheep' has a wonderful jazzy keyboard intro and the song is a much faster paced, led by Waters driving bass and Gilmour bursting in every few seconds firing chords from his guitar. The song has a quiet middle section with some excellent drumming from Mason and a rather odd recital of 'The Lord is my Shepard...' before it all burts through again with synthesizer freak outs and an anthemic riff from Gilmour at the end that must be the most exciting part in any Pink Floyd song ever written.

Not so much as a bad note on this album, the wierd Dog and Sheep affects fit right in (unlike the dog in Seamus) and i'm pretty sure you can here the fly from 'Grantchester Meadows' at the end of Sheep which is an odd throwback. The album deserves it's place in THE best of progressive rock. And as one critic commented "Two albums were released in 1977 that spoke out against government and society, one was Animals, the other was Never mind the bollox here's the Sex Pistols, in hindsight, which of the two seems the angriest, Animals". The album is very much the peak of Waters mix of darkness and clever lyrics and the rest of the bands attention to detail in the music to create a terrific atmosphere. 'The Wall' became a little too claustrophobic and the music didn't seem to breath as much as it did here, but was still an excellent follow up.