ANIMALS

Once upon a time, it was in 1977, and black clouds overshadowed the musical land pouring out their filthy burden of rotten tomatoes and evil discos when Pink Floyd bravely released "Animals" - a very progressive and highly conceptual album. One may say that the band only accomplished their contractual obligations and nothing more that it. But instead of releasing a second-class opus they gifted us with a first- class ticket to a cloudless world of marvels.

Due to the strangeness of the moment this work remained a bit far from eyes and ears and also is understandable that many could have supposed that was impossible for Pink Floyd to release an album as good as previous "Dark Side of the Moon" and "Wish You Were Here", but they did and were splendid!

There are also the references to Orwell's "Animal Farm", a great book but little known for non-English speakers ("1984", other Orwell's book is widely well-known) and references to a certain political phase in Britain that did not concern listeners around the world.

However, this elegant album is like a good wine having aged very well and still awesome to be heard and appreciated. Many people that did not include it among the basic Floyd discography are changing their minds and putting "Animals" alongside other band's bulwarks. Production and musicianship are fine and these by themselves make the album worthy.

There are in fact 3 songs, talking about three different species of humans, i.e., animals, 'Dogs', 'Pigs' and 'Sheep', being the second of the songs by its turn divided in 3 pieces: a main theme and two secondary themes, the shortest tracks in the album, both responsible for opening and ending the disk.

Although I sympathize much more with the character 'sheep' I consider the song 'Dogs' the best in the album, with an overall catchy atmosphere, great vocals and fine guitar background and solo; no surprise at all, as observed by other reviewers this is basically a 'guitar album' and this track is a good example of the path taken.

'Pigs' for some reason reminds me Harrison's 'Piggies' and there's also something Beatle-ish in the vocals and in the arrangement - one can argue that certain tunes a la Moody Blues are heard too. However, a bunch of swine sound effects spread throughout the song impoverish instead of enrich it, nevertheless the final result is fairly audible. The brief tracks 'Pigs on the wing, parts 1 & 2' albeit inserted in the general subject add little musically.

'Sheep' provides the angriest moments of the album, vocals and guitars are almost ever nervous, the general ambience varies from ironic tenderness to furious revolt. This track is album's most Floydian with chords recalling to 'One of these days' from album "Meddle", drums and bass with lines similar to 'Echoes' from the same album and exquisite keyboard tunes in "Atom Heart Mother" way. A (good) sensation of old PF's stuff grazes over the song.

This is an album compulsory to any prog (or non-prog) music collection. Excellent! Total: 4.