In Defence of Animals

Pink Floyd's 1977 album, Animals, is one of their four biggest selling LPs. After their Live 8 reunion, it was one of the big sellers of the four albums they made in the mid-70s that ensured their status as stadium-straddling behemoths - Dark Side Of The Moon, Wish You Were Here and The Wall being the other three. Chances are that most people who bought a copy after the reunion listened to it once. Uncut magazine recently did a list of the 30 Best Pink Floyd songs - not a single track from Animals made the list. When David Gilmour resurrected Pink Floyd in the 80s and 90s, not a single song from the album was played live.

Animals has come to be seen as a bit of an "odd one out" and received a "difficult" reputation. However, it is actually their third and last masterpiece (I'm counting Piper At The Gates Of Dawn and DSotM as their other two). Wish You Were Here is a great album, no denying it, but it doesn't hang together as a whole quite as well as Animals. The Wall, for some reason receives thumbs up from fans and critics alike, yet is an unfocused self-indulgent mess that descends into sub-Lloyd Webber operatics - there are a number of good songs (Nobody Home being a particular favourite of mine), but would anyone really remember it favourably if it didn't contain Another Brick In The Wall or Comfortably Numb?

So why is Animals a masterpiece? Firstly, it hangs together as an album - a independent entity existing purely on it's own terms - stupendously well, arguably even better than DSotM. It features some of Roger Waters' best lyrics, and maintains a furious, bitter and bleak world view that is reflected in the sparse, brutal music.

The music in Animals is sometimes seen as being out of character for Pink Floyd, but Sheep and Dogs were originally written, as Raving & Drooling and You Gotta Be Crazy respectively, to accompany Shine On You Crazy Diamond on the successor to DSotM. It was the fact that vinyl couldn't fit more than about 24 minutes of music per side that scuppered that idea. But the majority of the Animals album had been written, revised and gigged extensively since 1974. The music isn't totally different, either - the pounding bass rhythms are echoed in Shine On You Crazy Diamond (parts 5 and 6) or One Of These Days from 1971's Meddle. Pigs On The Wing recalls If from Atom Heart Mother.

The sound of the album, however, is different. Gone are the echo and reverb soaked sumptuous keyboard atmospherics and creamy guitar solos, replaced with tough, wiry guitar lines, pounding rhythms and uneasy, atonal keyboards. But the dry, delay-free sound is is all there because it suits the material. The album is an intense affair, almost totally surrendering melody to rhythm, but perfectly structured so that when Gilmour's fantastic descending guitar figure bursts furth at the end of Sheep, near the end of the album, it almost feels like a moment of total release.

When the album was first released in 1977 the musical landscape had undergone a total change with the advent of punk, Pink Floyd suddenly being out of fashion. But over 30 years on, Animals captures the sound and the spirit of bitterness, decay and dissatisfaction of the late 70s far better than the Sex Pistol's collection of pop songs.