ANIMALS

Pink Floyd

Psychedelic/Space Rock

4.53 | 4103 ratings

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Roger Waters won me over in his martyrdom of Syd Barrett in the band's previous album, 'Wish You Were Here'. In this album I find it more uncomfortable, his appropriating the noble animal characters of George Orwell's allegorical tale of the Bolshevik revolution and ostensibly using those characters to depict moral decay in contemporary Britain as a tirade against Capitalism. However, the bottom line is how the words mesh together and Waters is a brilliant wordsmith. And the words do have a prophetic ring to them. The mindless sheep do rise up against the predatory dogs, as we see in the Black Lives Matter protests in the world today.

First the negative. Pigs is just not a very good song and for once Waters lets himself down in the lyrics which are too acerbic, leveled against his target, Mary Whitehouse. Sheep has Waters best bass line on the album and Rick Wright delivers an interesting electric piano and organ part to the lyric. Nick Mason has nothing much to do on Sheep except have a good time and think about his next vintage car purchase and the biography of the band he's about to write. Graham Broad is a much stronger drummer of the same material on Roger Waters live 'In the Flesh' album. Roger Waters himself does all the singing on the Animals second side. His voice is grating on the ears. He is a much better singer today than he was back then. Dave Gilmour quit the album after the first side to be with his wife and new baby. He delivers his guitar parts to Sheep by courier to the recording studio with a message to Roger, 'wish you were here'. And I've never been able to work out the difference between 'Pigs on the Wing (Part one)' and 'Pigs on the Wing (Part two)'.

What remains is one of the finest Pink Floyd songs the band ever wrote, Dogs, which takes up the bulk of side one. The song begins with a catchy acoustic guitar rhythm that permeates through the entire piece. Rick Wright switches from a haunting organ melody over the top of the acoustic guitar to synthesizer, later on. There are two breaks during the song, the first featuring dog sounds and we get to hear Dave Gilmour's voice for the first time. Gilmour does four blinding electric guitar solos. It rarely gets better than this on a Pink Floyd song. The breaks are especially interesting. Roger Waters is a master at using the spaces between the notes to create atmosphere and capture feeling. The notes in the music can be as important as what's not being played. There is a subtle difference.

Animals is a difficult album to score. Like Yes's Relayer album, there's a combination of so much to admire against some fairly flat material that sags. Personally, I find myself playing earlier Pink Floyd albums like 'Obscured by Clouds' and 'More' in preference to this one. Back then they were a band, not a one man show.

iluvmarillion | 3/5 | 2020-6-30

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