ANIMALS

After the masterpiece "Wish You Were Here", full of slow ballads where the keyboards and synths played by Wright occupy the scene, comes Animals, a concept album based on the book Animal's Farm by George Orwell.

1. Pigs On The Wing Part 1 (1:25) is an acoustic intro, a lost chance because the melody is good but the song is too short.

2. Dogs (17:04) is considered the album's masterpiece, it's a 17-minute suite, which begins with rhythmic acoustic guitar, gritty Waters' voice, and keyboard carpet. Around 3'45'' comes a Gilmour riff which became very famous. Overall, the suite is a dilated song, based on drums, acoustic and electric guitar support and voice, sober as arrangements, more rock than the previous PF songs, with Gilmour's solo guitar in evidence. After 8 minutes the suite is finished, in fact we go back to the initial carpet of keyboards, time stops, static music is dilated in a rather long-winded and not very significant way. Then the same initial sequence starts again: acoustic guitars, vocals, drums, electric guitar solo. It doesn't seem to me like a great masterpiece. It is a song that has lost all progressive and psychedelic thrust, and that has more than anything else the grit of rock in Waters' voice and in Gilmour's solo. A song that is better when it is played live. Rating 8.

End of side A.

3. Pigs (Three Different Ones) (11:28) The song has an excellent beginning, bass and keyboards, vaguely psychedelic, then the rhythm begins with the singing. We are facing another rock ballad conducted by drums, vocals, electric guitar. Then there is a wonderful, obsessive long instrumental passage, with acid sounds, then another time the vocals by Waters, and the final solo by Gilmour. Rating 8,5.

4. Sheep (10:16) Sheep is a 10-minute mini suite that starts slowly, with a piece of keyboards and bass of almost two minutes that is not very useful, then the rock rhythm singing begins, which we have already heard in the two previous songs, but faster. Then there are some nice instrumental passages between keyboards and bass by Waters, in evidence. In the end, the rhythmic music starts again. In this song, the sung part and the instrumental part are not well integrated. Rating 7.5 / 8.

5. Pigs On The Wing Part 2 (1:25) is another useless musical piece.

With "Animals", Pink Floyd became the group of Roger Waters. He is the singer-songwriter who leads the group to develop a politically committed rock music album, with three long, dilated songs that have little to do with progressive and psychedelia. They are conventional rock songs in terms of structure and arrangement, without significant changes in rhythm and style, very homogeneous. Only in some instrumental situations there are art-rock passages (in addition to the sounds of animals). "Animals" is therefore the transition album to the third phase of Pink Floyd: The first is the psychedelic one, which goes from 1967 to 1970. The second is the progressive one, which starts with "Atom Heart Mother" and ends with "Wish You Were" (1975), where the songs are very dilated but also very accurate for arrangement and where the Wright's keabords are in evidence.

With Animals begins the third phase, that of "auteur rock", where Roger Waters is the boss of the group, where the lyrics matter more than the music. Here in Animals, to be honest, the music prevails over the lyrics and the songs are still long, similar to "Wish You Were Here", but more sober as an arrangement, with Wright's work on the background, and from the following "The Wall" the songs will become medium length, if not short, and the background music will be classic rock with orchestral and sometimes experimental arrangements. The golden age of progressive PF is over but Waters will be able to churn out two excellent albums as a singer-songwriter accompanied by the rest of the group.

Total Time: 41:38

Side A: 8, Side B: 8+.

Rating Album: 8,5. Four Stars.