ANIMALS

Prior to this album, the band was clearly drifting away from the "space rock" genre, with tracks like Money, Have A Cigar and the title track from the previous album. Here, they give it one last hurrah before moving on.

All five tracks on here are somewhere between very good and pretty good. Unfortunately, none of them ascend higher than that. The Pigs On The Wing tracks are nice bookends, but nothing overly special. Dogs is nice and has some of Gilmour's best guitar work. It is a slight stretch to get to its length, though. It probably could've used some chopping down. Pigs is probably the weakest of the bigger tracks on here, but it's still a nice track and I love the cowbell! Again, Gilmour is the best part of the track. Finally, Sheep starts slow but certainly provides the climax of the album with famous riffing... again, Gilmour carries it. If this was supposed to be more of a Waters solo album, I'm really not seeing it.

I'd say this is the band's second best album, which followed its best album and came right before its third best album. Unfortunately, much like the few albums that followed it, it showed the band had already hit their (studio) peak in around 1975. 4/5.