ANIMALS

Animals happens to be my least favorite out of the four classic era Pink Floyd albums that began with Dark Side Of The Moon and ended with The Wall. Of course this doesn't really say much considering that it's still a strong album from the band and the four star rating feels like a natural grade for this record. Still, this can be seen both as a privilege but also as a hinder for it ever becoming anything more than that.

This album was the first in line of releases where Roger Waters became the bands self-proclaimed leader by creating the record's concept, writing the lyrics and receiving credits for most of the songwriting. Even though I like when Waters gets control of the concept outline and lyrics, the songwriting is a whole different story. The three 10+ minutes compositions featured here are way too long for their own good. Dogs is obviously the biggest sinner with Pigs not falling too much behind in that aspect while Sheep has one of those unnecessarily prolonged intros that never seems to work for me, especially when it's added right in the middle of an album.

The experimentation with the sound effects have always been an important part of Pink Floyd's repertoire, but this time these effects are mainly used on vocals which gets old the moment they start using it on Dogs. Unfortunately one seems to really need to accept this new gimmick in order to fully enjoy this album and I'm obviously not the person this material was written for. As for the conceptual aspect of Animals, it does come off sounding way to cynical and never succeeds to engage me on the same level as The Wall or The Final Cut manage to do.

I realize that my review has been on the negative side but that's because I'm trying to balance out all the praise that Animals has received over the years. It's definitely a great album in its own right but problems do arise whenever I try to compare it to the other classics from Pink Floyd's career.

***** star songs: Pigs On The Wing, Pt. 1 (1:25)

**** star songs: Dogs (17:04) Pigs (Three Different Ones) (11:28) Sheep (10:16) Pigs On The Wing, Pt. 2 (1:25)