Review of Pink Floyd's Animals

Released 1977

"Deaf, dumb, and blind, you just keep on pretending
That everyone's expendable and no-one had a real friend
And it seems to you the thing to do would be to isolate the winner
And you believe at heart, everyone's a killer."

Animals was a requested for Christmas present along with the 12" single of The Power Of Love. I was young, I was confused.

I sometimes wish that I'd had the sense to purchase Pink Floyd's albums in the order that they'd been released. As it was, I had leaped backwards and forwards through their discography with the consequence certain albums suffered. I'm sure that if I had bought The Wall before The Final Cut I'd have appreciated the former much more. Likewise, with the benefit of hindsight I feel that Animals would now rank higher in my estimation, if it had been the next Floyd album I had bought after Wish You Were Here.

Therefore, reading between the lines, it's fair to conclude that Animals is one of my least played Pink Floyd albums. Only Ummagumma ranks lower I'm afraid.

I really can't put my finger on why it has never had the same appeal for me as it I know it has for countless others. Indeed I know many, many others who would place it firmly in their top three Floyd albums.

Due to it's high regard amongst my contemporaries, on Christmas day 1984, I was positively moist with anticipation when we returned from the lunch time Christmas pint and I had an hour to kill before dinner.

I was aware of the infamous tale of the escaping flying inflatable pig during the photo-shoot for the album cover. Holding the 12" sleeve up close I wondered why they'd bothered of going to the trouble in the first place. Neither the outside photo or those inside the gate fold sleeve held any of the mystique of the packaging of, say, Wish You Were Here. I didn't get it.

The concept behind the album was plain enough, and obviously 'borrowed' in no small measure from George Orwell. This in itself was disappointing to me, as it remains the only instance of Roger Waters' creativity being reliant on the forethought of others.

Like Wish you Were Here and The Wall, Animals is effectively bookended by a prologue and epilogue, in this case Roger solo with an acoustic guitar.

The strongest part of Animals is the dark humour of Roger's lyrics. I think he remains hugely underrated as a lyricist and a political commentator. He is plainly someone you'd avoid if you were inclined to call the Samaritans, but there are, dare I say it, flashes of Dylanesque wordsmithery which, in years to come, will no doubt be integral to a University degree course.

As I have said previously in my review of The Wall, the juxtaposition of the voices of David Gilmour and Roger Waters is an undervalued aspect of the appeal of Pink Floyd. This is evident here, with the contrast between Roger's scathing spitting of the lyrics of Pigs On The Wing and David's lush and more melodic vocal in Dogs. It is impossible to imagine Roger singing Dogs: it just wouldn't work. That for me shows that, although subsequent events may appear to contradict this fact, Roger must have, at one time had enormous faith in the talent of his colleague, in that he could write specifically for him, knowing he couldn't possibly impart the same required emotion.

Contrast this with Pigs (Three Different Ones). This song needs Roger's angst to work. On my first listen in 1984, it was this song that made me frown and think that the balance between lyric / subject matter and instrumentation was all wrong. It was the first time that it was obvious that this was becoming Rogers band. It wasn't that the instrumentation was poor; obviously it wasn't, but it was subservient to the lyric. Yes, there were still some great guitar work: the solo in this song being the best on the album, but something was missing. I can see now that Richard Wright's influence on the album was minimal and the album suffered massively for it. Go back to The Dark Side Of The Moon or Wish You Were Here and remove Richard Wright's influence and you suddenly realise that, to a large extent, he was the glue that held the whole band together. He was, in effect, the soul of the band. And therein lies my continuing problem with Animals; it has no soul.

Sheep is, in my opinion, the strongest song on the album, being much more a band effort, cleverly constructed, using innovative technology on the vocals and is not half bad. So, why do I still sound negative? One; it's all too bitter and pointless and two; I felt cheated when I later recognised the guitar motif on the run out of the song being almost entirely replicated on David Gilmour's first solo album a year later.

Reading this back, I'm struck that, overall it appears that I have very little good to say about the album. This does bother me as it currently ranks eighth on the greatest prog album chart on Prog Archives. If other like minded individuals rank it so highly, I will continue to reconsider it and, who knows, one day I might see the light. Then again.