ANIMALS

An anomaly in the Floyd discography. It's the progiest thing the band did since at least Meddle. It's the first album where Richard Wright does not contribute any music. Judging by the writing credits, you would almost think it was a Waters solo album. Two of the songs here were already written and performed live before WYWH was recorded. There's lots of synths here(VCS3, MiniMoog, ARP Solina, Mini-Korg). Only AMLOR ten years later had more synths. But honestly, does anybody really care about that album? I didn't think so.

Waters had a concept about humans being portrayed as different animals as early as the DSOTM tour. As early as 1974 the band performed two songs that would later be recorded for this album. Of course the lyrics and song titles were changed to fit the animals theme. "You Gotta Be Crazy" became "Dogs", while "Raving & Drooling" became "Sheep". The writing credits here are very misleading. Gilmour wrote almost all of the music for "Dogs", while Waters wrote the lyrics obviously. Gilmour also deserves a co-writing credit on "Sheep"(the same way he deserved a co-writing credit on "Money"). Unlike earlier albums, Waters does most of the lead vocals on Animals. It would stay that way until he left.

Waters only plays acoustic guitar on the "Pigs On A Wing" songs and bass on "Dogs". Gilmour plays bass on "Pigs(Three Different Ones)" and "Sheep". Have you ever wondered why the bass playing on those two songs sound better than just about any other Floyd song? Well, now you know why. Although Wright had no input to the music, his playing here is great. Besides the synths he plays Hammond, Fender Rhodes, Wurlitzer and Hohner clavinet. This is the only Floyd album to feature both talk-box *and* vocoder. They even use the secret ingredient which can make any song better: cowbell!

Animals has some of Gilmour's best guitar playing on a Floyd album. He overdubbed so many guitar parts on this album that when they toured for it they had to hire a second guitarist. That guitarist was Snowy White. On the 8track cartridge version of Animals, the two "Pigs On A Wing" songs are joined together by a solo from Snowy. I still haven't heard this but I assume it wouldn't be too hard to find on torrent sites. Mason does some of his best drumming here since at least DSOTM.

This album didn't quite do as well sales wise as the previous two. That's understandable because there was no song suitable for radio. Animals is also more adventurous musically than those two albums. For people who loved this album when it came out, it must have been a shock to hear The Wall for the first time. This once great band's last good album. After this they became 'Roger Waters featuring Pink Floyd' and then later, 'The David Gilmour Band'. Still, for an album released in January 1977, it's pretty proggy. Pink Floyd could only make a more mainstream and radio-friendly album after this.

If it weren't for the pointless "Pigs On A Wing" songs, I would be tempted to give this 5 stars. The only other problem I have is that the Solina solo in the middle of "Dogs" goes on a bit too long. Otherwise a solid 4 stars.