FEATURE:
Vinyl Corner
Pink Floyd - Animals
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I could have included this album…
IN THIS PHOTO: David Gilmour on Fender guitar with Pink Floyd in concert in Rotterdam, Netherlands, in 1977/PHOTO CREDIT: Barry Schultz
in Second Spin, as it is not one of Pink Floyd’s most-acclaimed release. Animals was released on 21st January, 1977. It is the tenth album from the legendary band. Coming between two hugely celebrated albums – 1975’s Wish You Were Here and 1979’s The Wall -, there are some mixed reviews for an album that I think is really strong. To be fair, I think a lot of the mixed reviews have come since the album was released. At the time, Animals received positive reviews from critics and was commercially successful. It reached number-two in the U.K. and number-three in the U.S.A. Recorded at the band's Britannia Row Studios in London throughout 1976, Animals carries on the longform compositions that made up their previous works such as Wish You Were Here. In terms of subject matter, Animals concentrates on the social-political conditions of mid-1970s Britain. It was a change from the style of their earlier work. Tension within the band during production culminated in keyboardist Richard Wright being fired two years later. That may all sound like a recipe for disaster and commercial disregard, but I think Animals is one of Pink Floyd’s most rewarding records. I would recommend people grab Animals on vinyl as, like so many Pink Floyd albums, there is so much to love and immerse yourself in. Whilst not as accessible as albums like Wish You Were Here, I think that Animals is a fascinating album. I will bring in a couple of reviews for it soon. Before then, Classic Album Sundays wrote about Animals on its fortieth anniversary in 2017:
“The album is much more direct as it features confrontational lyrics loosely based on George Orwell’s Animal Farm. The Orwellian novel explores the corruption of power and human nature’s predisposition to destroy even the best ideals. The novel criticised Stalinism and represented the people within the different levels of communist society as animals. Somehow this seems particularly apt in the current political climate.
The pigs are the smartest animals and originate the idea of a rebellion against the farm’s oppressive owner. The pigs then run the farm and abuse their power. They use the dogs as secret police and to keep the other animals in line by killing those they considered traitors. The sheep are the mindless masses who follow the pigs’ every whim no matter how ridiculous they may seem.
Instead of critiquing Stalin’s political system, Waters used the metaphor to apply to people in thrall with, or subject to capitalism.
Waters felt compelled to write about society’s woes as he said at the time: “I think the world is a very, very sad place. I find myself at the moment, backing away from it all. I think these are very mournful days. Things aren’t getting better, they’re getting worse and the seventies is a very baleful decade.”
There are three pigs, two of which represent real characters. The first is the corporate pig, the second is Margaret Thatcher, and the third is Mary Whitehouse, leader of the National Viewers and Listeners Association who spoke of moral pollution through an intense censorship campaign. As Waters said “Why does she make such a fuss about everything if she isn’t motivated by fear? She’s frightened that we’re all being perverted. I was incensed by Mary Whitehouse, as I am by all book-burners and Bible-bashers: people who foster that sexual guilt and shame, who try and deny people any opportunity to fulfill their sexual destiny.”
When Animals was released in January 1977, it didn’t receive overwhelmingly great reviews. It came out during the punk and disco heyday, a time when Johnny Rotten had taken to wearing a Pink Floyd shirt on which he scrawled “I hate”.
Here is a bit of the Rolling Stone review: “For Pink Floyd, space has always been the ultimate escape. It still is, but now definitions have shifted. The romance of outer space has been replaced by the horror of spacing out… Animals is Floyd’s attempt to deal with the realization that spacing out isn’t the answer either. There’s no exit; you get high, you come down again. That’s what Pink Floyd has done, with a thud.”
Once again critics were proved wrong as Animals is many Floyd fans’ favourite. It is also interesting to note that Johnny Rotten’s position was slightly rocked when Floyd drummer Nick Mason later went on to produce The Damned’s 1977 album “Music For Pleasure”.
And forty years later, it’s message continues to resonate”.
I really love Animals and, for Pink Floyd fans and non, it contains some of their most interesting concepts and moments. I like the fact that you get a short song, Pigs on the Wing (Part 1), opening the first side and the epic track that is Dogs closes that side. Conversely, the second side finishes with the short track, Pigs on the Wing (Part 2); the long Pigs (Three Different Ones) and Sheep open that side.
In their positive review of Animals, AllMusic had some very interesting observations about one of Pink Floyd’s best albums:
“Of all of the classic-era Pink Floyd albums, Animals is the strangest and darkest, a record that's hard to initially embrace yet winds up yielding as many rewards as its equally nihilistic successor, The Wall. It isn't that Roger Waters dismisses the human race as either pigs, dogs, or sheep, it's that he's constructed an album whose music is as bleak and bitter as that world view. Arriving after the warm-spirited (albeit melancholy) Wish You Were Here, the shift in tone comes as a bit of a surprise, and there are even less proper songs here than on either Wish or Dark Side. Animals is all extended pieces, yet it never drifts -- it slowly, ominously works its way toward its destination. For an album that so clearly is Waters', David Gilmour's guitar dominates thoroughly, with Richard Wright's keyboards rarely rising above a mood-setting background (such as on the intro to "Sheep"). This gives the music, on occasion, immediacy and actually heightens the dark mood by giving it muscle. It also makes Animals as accessible as it possibly could be, since it surges with bold blues-rock guitar lines and hypnotic space rock textures. Through it all, though, the utter blackness of Waters' spirit holds true, and since there are no vocal hooks or melodies, everything rests on the mood, the near-nihilistic lyrics, and Gilmour's guitar. These are the kinds of things that satisfy cultists, and it will reward their attention -- there's just no way in for casual listeners”.
I will round things off in a second. I was very interested by a review from Pitchfork. They gave Animals a perfect ten when they assessed a masterful work:
“It begins somewhere for everyone. There's the first song that grabs your attention and seizes the imagination, the first album that demonstrates such overall strength and originality that it becomes something more for most listeners, just as there is the first kiss that awakens the soul and forever changes the vision.
I admit without qualm that it began for me with Animals. My brother was in college, and one day I went through his records and listened to the ones with the coolest covers. Animals fascinated me then as it still fascinates me today. It is the acute anthropomorphic fantasy, possessing a timeless quality that has thrust it into the category of "classic," though it may remain forever in the shadow of its more commercially successful older brother, Dark Side Of The Moon. Consisting of three tracks each longer than ten minutes and two tracks under two minutes, Animals is not for the attention- span- deficient. However, within this impenetrable fortress of radio- unfriendly tracks, we hear Dave Gilmour's guitars at their absolute best, get a full-on dose of Roger Waters' powerful lyrical imagery, and are presented with the worst elements of our own humanity- packaged in the skins of "Sheep," "Dogs" and "Pigs (Three Different Ones)". For those weaned on The Wall and Dark Side, you'll find Animals to be a whole new bag of feed. Where Floyd's two most recognizable albums made their mark with operatic aggression and fear, Animals deals in dirt- under- the- fingernails reality, the common smallness that simultaneously binds and repels us all”.
Go and get the vinyl of Animals if you can - or go and stream it if not. I think that Animals has received some negativity from some. Others compare it unfavourably to Pink Floyd classics like The Dark Side of the Moon. I think that Animals is underrated, which is why I was keen to put it…
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