ANIMALS

Prog for the sake of prog, and thats not a bad thing. My love for Floyd has died over the past three years, but it's hard to deny the innovativeness given in this album. Very experimental and very creative, and with lyrics I could connect with better than any other floyd album behind the wall. This album is probably the most accesible than most of the ther five song or less mega albums of the seventies, so if your new to prog, this album will definately get you into the whole epic song thing which may be progressive musics most beloved attribute. After their so called "masterpiece" Wish you were here (and many know I disagree majorly), the band tours and apparently loses a couple of synthesizers, cause there is a huge loss of synth from WYWH to this one. Also while on break RogerWaters takes up the book animal farm, and puts in lyrics the different animals expressed in the anti Stalinist book, and their attitudes and social status. And here they are...

The opener and closer songs are both only a minuete long, acuostic, and are on the animal farm subject about shelter from the pigs. Pretty and sweet, but nothing compared to the upcoming songs. Dogs is supposed to be the major song of the album, barely under eighteen minuetes and filled with Gilmour flying solo's. This song also strays from the given concept the most, and basically talks about the abuse dogs get, especially on the farm. While the beggining and ending parts of this composition are excellent, there is a part in the middle section where for about five minuetes the whole song drops to a quite mellotron and Waters trying to make a dogs barking noise on his bass, this gets annoying and very tedious very fast. I'm not really sure I believe this song is the centerpiece of the album, Gilmours acoustic strumming is very cool and Waters lyrics are at their best, but there is a lack of emotion in this song that dosent hit the peak like the next song. Pigs is my favirote song for many different reasons, the personal attacks, the experimaentalness, and one of Gilmours finest solo's at the end! The song starts with really cool keyboards and some awseome bass fills, then quickly picks up into an upbeat rant about the abusive control of the pigs (which is a definate animal farm reference) through the late seventies world leaders; The president, the queen, and the virgin mary. The song goes into an awesome jam session after the first two versus starting with a simple guitar riff, then builds with Roger on a talk box making some disgusting pig squeel noises... and it rocks! Afterwards the most angry verse, then Gilmour explodes and rips for the past minuete or two. Sheep is cool musically, but very creepy lyrically, with the talk of the mindless following sheep going to the slaughter, then lashing back at the sheppard and running free, but still being under the reighn of the pigs and the Dogs. One downside to this song is that it's easily the most prevelant God basher of any Floyd song, and easily goes right up there with Jethro Tulls blasphemies. Musically, it starts with some smooth electric piano, the bursts into awesome guitar riffing and vocals that phase into synthesizer. At the end of the song Gilmour go's onto an awesome riff, while Mason shows that he is not actually a drum machine. The album ends with pigs on the wing part two.

There are some disapointments brought on by this album of epics, the lack of synthesizers, the God bashing. Both of these are what convince to give this album what it's rating is. Musically the band is probably at it's highest peak, if you want Gilmoure, you want Dogs, if you want Waters you go for Pigs. Of course the other members of the band stand pretty firm as a rythym section, but hell, this is prog standing out just a little on three ten minuete plus songs will not kill you! Also if you are a veteran of prog, and for some strange reason you do not own this album, you probably shouldnt set your sites high for high complexity and serious virtusoness, like I said, this is a good album for begginers, and after you grow more into prog, you will find the album a bit more repetitive and stagnant. As for the first year or so of this album...

4 stars