Released: 1977
Tracks: Pigs on the Wing 1; Dogs; Pigs (Three Different Ones); Sheep; Pigs on the Wing 2
Best track: Dogs probably, maybe Sheep depending on my mood
Tracks to skip: Pigs on the Wing 1 & 2
Pigs, Dogs & Sheep…obviously it all works into an Animal Farm type thing. I’m not too big on lyrics so I’m not too moved by it all. To me, the important part is always the music. The thing that stands out most about Animals is how stripped down it is. True that the 3 main songs are long (17, 11 & 10 minutes respectively), but to me this album seems
almost punk-like in its presentation. Stripped down & rawer than Floyd had possibly ever been. Rick Wright’s keyboard textures are more subdued on this album, there’s more guitar, Roger Waters’ best bass playing so far on record and definitely less ‘atmospheric’ stuff than Pink Floyd are usually known for. So, while this is absolutely stuck in the middle of the ‘classic’ Pink Floyd material, it’s definitely different; it’s not ‘just another Pink Floyd album.’
The two Pigs on the Wing are both minute and a half long things that bookend the three ‘real’ songs of the album and are total filler. They’re very boring and basic and I always skip them. I’m sure they work into the whole lyrical composition, but in my view they’re useless. However, you can’t judge this album by those two songs. The three songs in the middle are clearly the meat of this album. Dogs is a great track and today I think it’s the best one. Some days I learn more towards Sheep, but not today. I’m willing to bet that it’s because the track was co-written by David Gilmour. I think I’m always partial to his stuff. Dogs and Sheep are both excellent songs and surprises to those of us who’ve only heard Pigs (Three Different Ones) as the lone radio representative of this album. Yes, Pigs is a good song. I really like it and thankfully (probably since it’s 11 minutes long) it’s not played to death on the radio like a lot of other, shorter Floyd songs are.
Even if you don’t pay attention to the lyrics (like me), I still think that musically more people could probably relate to this album more. It’s not very spacey at all; light years away from the early stuff. All in all, this is a really good album. It does annoy me that in my view there are only three songs worth listening to, which makes this to be a short album. Maybe it just feels short; I mean, it’s longer than Revolver by a few minutes. It’s something we have to live with, though. All single-disc albums in the 70’s didn’t go much past 40 minutes so we can’t possibly expect something like Animals to be an hour long. For the length that it is, Animals is great album. It’s not as great as Dark Side and Wish You Were Here, but it’s still more than worthy of being in your record collection.
Rating: 92
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