ANIMALS

In my opinion Animals is equal with any other Pink Floyd album. What makes me respect the album to a greater extent is the direction that the Floyd chose to take their music with the album. After the huge commercial successes of Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here it would have been easy for the band to sell themselves out to the commercial market and produce an album with radio-friendly tracks and a cheerful message, but this is not what Animals was intended to be. Instead the band made an album of three songs over 10 minutes and at either end of the album classic inro/outro style tracks. In this way Animals retained the feeling of Pink Floyd that would soon begin to be lost with the following Wall album.

'Dogs' is the best track on the album and one of the Floyd's greatest ever. In this track David Gilmour displays his full powers as a supreme guitarist with his wailing solos that are not overdone, but rather comfortably fit with the flow of the song. His singing (which I much prefer to Waters) is excellent and the lyrics convey a story that is powerful and at the same time not over the top like the of the post-Waters takeover lyrics. 'Dogs' has the same feeling as 'One of These Days' from the Meddle album and finishes in a style not dissimilar to 'Eclipse'. Overall a fantastic song.