Pink Floyd: Animals (1977)
Importance in Rock History: popularized the giant inflatable pig as a rock concert prop
Even though I’ve been a Pink Floyd fan for a while, I’ve never really given this album a good listen. Now, thanks to Kazaa and boredom, I got the chance to check it out. Needless to say, it has been playing non-stop in my place all week. It seems to capture the band about halfway between the spacy progressive rock of Dark Side of the Moon and the bitter hard guitar of the The Wall. The trademark Floyd solos and several minute long ‘trip outs’ are still there, but the guitar sounds a bit too angry for mellow psychedelia. Maybe this album is just playing to my more recent moods: it’s dark and pretty cynical about humankind.
Here’s what someone more intelligent over at Amazon.com has to say:
“Although not in the same vein as the deliciously hallucinogenic earlier Floyd works such 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 Farm, Roger Waters condemns the avarice and inequalities of capitalism, metaphorically and musically grouping humans as pigs, dogs, and sheep. The pigs are self-righteous hypocrites inflicting their beliefs on everyone else, the dogs greedy money-grabbers, and the sheep witless followers. Dark, cynical, and brilliantly composed, Animals is an ingenious and under-acknowledged album. –Naomi Gesinger “
So which animal are you? I’m a pig with a dose of sheep tossed in for good measure. I’m sure I’ll also become a dog soon enough. Ahh, how lovely ideals are before you lose them.