How does it compare to the artist's other releases
Outstanding
Value for Money
Excellent
Advantages:
see review
Disadvantages:
see review
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
The album
The year 1977 marked the beginning of a difficult era for Pink Floyd. It had begun auspicoiusly enough with the release in January 1977 of Animals. This particular album however, was never destined to be hailed as the greatest Floyd offering ever. It received a respectful if not overly warm welcome from the fans critics alike, yet it still proved itself to be both a commercial and an artistic success. True, the album had not scaled the heights of Dark Side Of The Moon either financially or creatively; but it was still a huge accomplishment by any standards reaching number 1 all over Europe, number 2 in the UK and number 3 in the States..
Ironically 1977 was also the year in which the band had finally cemented the stellar status which every would-be rock star dreams of attaining. The In The Flesh tour had confirmed the stadium filling status of Pink Floyd and crowds of 60-70,000 were commomplace. Although it was never destined to be hailed as one of the truly great moments in Floyd's career, Animals had succeeded as a project and for the first six months of 1977 the band toured the stadiums of the world promoting a tour which, given the huge size of the venues, was ironically dubbed Pink Floyd - In The Flesh.
Animals will forever be associated with images of flying pigs. Under Roger Waters direction Hipgnosis had again managed to infuse an ordinary everyday image with such potency that the band did not even have to put it's name on the cover. The album was a distinct evolution in style from Pink Floyd. Waters lyrics were increasingly important and had come to enjoy equal prominence to the music on the album. The lyrics were already full of vitriol and bile which would dominate the next two Floyd albums. Of the five tracks which make up the album, four are credited solely to Waters with the writing credits shared with David Gilmour only on the epic Dogs. Animals therefore marks the first Floyd album which was devoid of any compositional input from Rick Wright, a trend which was set to continue on to The Wall. The music is definitely poorer for it.
Animals has never really hit the spot with the Floyd crowd although in the live arena the album was given every chance to make its mark. The album was performed in its entirety for 1977's In The Flesh tour and was very well received. Animals was the first of three Floyd albums to be, not only master minded by Roger Waters, but also to be built mainly around Waters compositions. Fortunately the album also coincided with Roger beginning the climb towards the very best of his form as a writer. The choice of subject matter is typically bleak an joyless but instrumentally the band continued to shine as brightly as ever. Rick Wright did not contribute as a writer but his instrumental performance is among the best of his entire career.
The music
Pigs On The Wing (part one), Waters:
The Animals album opens with the plaintive strains of Roger Waters Pigs On The Wing (part one). This is a very untypical Floyd song, sung by Roger Waters over acoustic guitar accompaniment sounding for all the world like some 1960's singer-songwrite, is a kind of palate-cleanser. He would later reveal it was a love song to his then first wife Carolyne. There is a kind of symmetry at work here. As with Wish You Were Here, the album rests on four principal compositions and as with the previous album where Shine On You Crazy Diamond acted as the musical book ends opening and closing the album, so too does Pigs On The Wing which crops up again at the end of Animals, albeit in a single, final verse.
Dogs (Waters / Gilmour):
It follows and takes up the rest of the space on the vinyl release. This is a joint Gilmour Waters composition of epic proportions and was one of two songs on this album had already been performed (and bootlegged) live on stage for almost two years under the title You Gotta Be Crazy. It had now been formalised under it's new title as a song depicting the barbaric behaviour humans are capable of, it featured the noise of barking treated by a Vocoder effects unit, with eerie results.
Pigs (Three Different Ones) - (Waters):
This track is next up, the lyric of the vinyl side two opener rhymes 'house-proud town mouse with Whitehouse', the latter a clear reference to moral guardian Mary Whitehouse. This bespactacled old lady was constantly in the media bemoaning the lack of morality on television and radio, and had already attracted the ire of Deep Purple's Ian Gilian whose 'Mary Long' combined her name with that of fellow moral crusader Lord Longford. While Gilian asked when she lost her virginity, Waters bottles out and semi-obscures a 'fuck you'!
Sheep (Waters):
This track had begun life as Raving And Drooling and was already familiar to live audiences long before the release of the album. Depicting sheep grazing peacefully before being sent for slaughter, it includes a parody of the 23rd Psalm ('The Lord Is My Shepherd') again delivered through the machine-like Vocoder. By this time, Orwell's Animal Farm looked more of a relevant reference point than the Bible. Roger has said it had more to do with The Wall, the album that followed it, than to predecessor Wish You Were Here, even though two songs had been imported from those sessions. He also said that Sheep in which the sheep revolt and kill the dogs, foretold riots in Brixton and Toxteth.
Pigs On The Wing (part two), (Waters):
This piece closes the album and almost feels like an afterthought which ends the album on a slightly lighter note and even suggests the whole thing might have been a dream - make that nightmare - sequence told by one dog to another. According to Sound's review, it offered the listener 'words of comfort'. The concept of a pig on the wing had, through accident or design, become reality the previous December when an inflatable porker, part of the unique cover photo-shoot, had slipped its moorings and allegedly appeared in Heathrow Airport's flight lane! All good publicity for the forthcoming release ...
Animals - Pink Floyd
Although not in the same vein as the deliciously hallucinogenic earlier Floyd works such
... more
as Ummagumma and Dark Side of the Moon, Animals is innovative and musically diverse in its own right. Inspired in part by George Orwell's political fable Animal Fa...
Animals -
Although not in the same vein as the deliciously hallucinogenic earlier Floyd works such
... more
asUmmagummaandDark Side of the Moon,Animalsis innovative and musically diverse in its own right. Inspired in part by George Orwell's political fableAnimal Farm, Ro...
ANIMALS
Pink Floyd: David Gilmour (vocals, guitar); Richard Wright (vocals, keyboards); Roger
... more
Waters (vocals, bass); Nick Mason (drums).Recorded at Britannia Row Studios, London, England.Digitally remastered by Doug Sax (The Mastering Lab, Los Angeles, Califor...
very helpful
helpful
helpful
helpful
![River Is Wide, The [Remastered] - Forum (The)](http://images.ciao.com/iuk/images/products/small/251/River_Is_Wide_The_Remastered_Forum_The__6006251.jpg)
