Animals [Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered]

If you are new to Floyd but own 'Echoes' or 'A Collection Of Great Dance Songs' then check out 'Sheep' more closely. The sound/feel of this one track is the same as on Dogs and Pigs. The two ballads on the album, Pigs on the Wing 1 and 2 only amount to 3 minutes of this 42 minute magnum opus and are rare because they are love songs. Love songs on a Floyd album indeed, next there will be comedy. The last time one could laugh with Floyd was back in '69 when they were taking the mick of the Scots in 'Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict'.

This is a very bleak, miserable album, cold and desolate but I love it. Nick Mason adds sombre drumming, almost funeral beat in the mid part of Dogs. His traditional cymbal playing is here which just brings enough life to each piece. David Gilmour pours his soul out on any of the guitar solos. Richard Wright's grand piano is fragmented and broken (it's meant to be) so its superb construction makes for an even colder feel. To me, Wright has never matched his piano (not keyboards) playing here. But come the showdown of each piece everyone gels and the finest Hard Rock is produced.

The cover is again by Hipgnosis but Roger had a lot to do with it but not fully credited for it so he fell out with them. Hence, Scarfe on The Wall. Even though the pig on the cover is painted in a real inflatable was used but broke away causing air traffic chaos until it landed in Kent. The photo inside the booklet are more comprehensive than the original LP version and include colour. This does not detract anything from the original artwork. The building used on the cover is Battersea Power Station, London. It is now a shell of its former self but it radiates a menacing coldness which suits this album perfectly.

Musically I cannot liken this to any other album (by any artist). It is simply stunning and unique. This is what George Orwell's 1937 novel "Road To Wigan Pier" set to music would have sounded. Others (Bowie and Rick Wakeman icluded) have tried their hand at an Orwellian approach but this is the best.

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This was four years after what is generally acknowledged as Pink Floyd’s finest moment, Dark Side of the Moon, which was no doubt a seminal moment in recording history for a number of reasons. However, by this point the musical climate was changing. Floyd were beginning to be viewed as ‘Dinosaurs’, and a type of music called punk that had been brewing in NYC for many years had exploded onto the scene, changing social and musical attitudes worldwide (although soon the notion of punk music would become as equally contrived as the view of Floyd as a pretentious band for stoners). Floyd had become associated with an old age of hallucinogenic, hippy led space rock, and the long tracks that had peppered their fantastic 1975 album Wish You Were Here only enforced that view.

With those two points in mind, it’s not difficult to see why Animals does have a partly different sound to Floyd’s previous two masterpieces. It is edgier and more guitar driven, Waters (who supplies all the albums vocals) spits with more sarcastic malice then ever before. However, Floyd had thankfully not given up their penchant for epic tracks, and the album’s core three songs all clock in at over ten minutes. In fact, the album keeps many of the aspects that make Floyd such an excellent and unique group, such as the long instrumental sections and the ambient noises (heard here in the form of cows, sheep etc). It has a definite floydian stamp all over it, and that, for me, is why it is one of Floyd’s greatest albums.

With Animals, you get everything brilliant about Floyd cased into fifty minutes. Roger Waters’s lyrics are incredible, drawing on Orwellian influences and making them relevant to 1970’s society. He sounds as disaffected and angry as many a punk rocker on the song ‘Pigs (Three Different Ones)’, and although they give a definite indication to the lyrical directions he would take to an extreme on ‘The Wall’ and ‘The Final Cut’, they are less personal here, making them more relevant and in a sense more affecting.
Although Gilmour has less of a say here then on previous albums, his musicianship is reliably mindblowing, from the atmospheric ‘Dogs’ to the brooding riff on ‘Pigs’. This album stands as possibly the last time in the bands four member period that every member is utilised to the best of their ability.

Also, Unlike ‘The Wall’, which was indeed a sprawling, epic concept album, every track here stands up brilliantly in its own right. There is no filler. Each song is marvellous in its own way, and each could be a classic, yet for some reason the songs from this album do tend to be slightly overlooked. ‘Dogs’ certainly stands alongside ‘Echoes’ as Pink Floyd at their very best, despite the differences between the two songs. Seventeen minutes long, it is a simplistically complex creation which combines some of Water’s greatest lyrics with Gilmour’s mammoth guitar performance to create a warningly malevolent soundscape. The afore mentioned Pigs is a snarling tirade against society, driven by bleak, fast paced guitar and eerie keyboard. Sheep is bizarre, eclectic, but still brilliant, and the first and last tracks, Pigs on The Wing (parts 1 and 2) are both acoustic, and both poignant.

In the history of one of the worlds greatest ever bands, Animals could certainly be viewed as a transition album. Water’s social indignation began to monopolise the lyrics, and other members began to take a back seat when it came to song writing. However, taken out of context, it stands tall as an incredible, still very relevant album, a magical moment when all four members of the band came together one final time to create a small slice of still underrated musical perfection.