Animals

by

Pink Floyd

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Roger Waters and David Gilmour composed "Animals" at a time in England when the face of rock music was drastically changing, 1977. Punk bands were forming everywhere, and they all hated Pink Floyd's brand of drawn-out, ethereal music -- stuff they felt was pompous. Thus, given the times, "Animals" turns out to be an impressively guitar-driven album, musical compositions that, despite it all, are also drawn-out and ethereal as only Pink Floyd can be. The middle of this great album courageously contains three lengthy songs, much too long- winded for radio, thus spoiling the album's commercial viability. Also, "Animals" strangely opens and closes with two short and melodically pleasing acoustic songs about love gone bad; "Pigs on the Wing," parts 1 and 2, somehow work well with the overall vibe of the album. Call it a settling of the nerves.

In many instances, "Animals" is fairly stripped-down, with Gilmour's soothing voice completely missing, and Richard Wright contributing absolutely nothing, thus nixing past creative keyboard elements. The possessive Waters writes all lyrics, and the concept of "Animals" is entirely his. In his harshest manner, Waters rips apart late-1970s society through the use of three types of animals: dogs, the materialistic and glib "yuppies" of a decade later, concerned only with wealth, good times, power and their own well-being; "Pigs" are no less flattering, high-positioned and self-righteous, they preach and dispense their high-minded, moralist views from atop the world's ranks; "Sheep" are the aimless and docile masses who get used and abused by the more powerful Dogs and Pigs in society. It's pretty acrimonious stuff, and downbeat lyrics like "all alone and dying of cancer" don't do much to lighten the mood. Weary of the corrupt and crumbling society surrounding him, Waters went on a musical rampage. Political foes, economic hardships and sleazy low-lifes all get their medicine from the non-apologetic Waters, within the confines of these thematically devised tunes.

Though he writes good, astute, observational lyrics, Waters is a bit of a "dog" himself, and he often comes across as self-imposing and self-righteous as the album moves on. Ultimately, "Animals" is great because of the actual MUSIC. Enter Gilmour, thankfully rescuing this one-man monopoly on creativity. Gilmour remains his usual melodic self, pushing forth the fairly paltry compositions with his brand of tunefulness and soaring guitars.

On "Dogs," an interesting moment occurs after Waters cheerily wails, "Have a good drown/Dragged down by the stone." The word "stone" is then repeated countless times through a haze of electronic muffling as dogs bark chillingly in the background and a synth sizzles quietly. Music like this is not heard everyday, and Pink Floyd should be commended for seriously reviving their music and changing with the times a bit back in 1977. The band's more quaint and drug-induced days of singing about lazy nature scenes or fairy-tale scenarios where one merely observes (see The Piper at the Gates of Dawn) were long over by "Animals." It became socio-political music with a harder edge, all run by Waters and Gilmour. There's a sense of purpose and direction from Waters on "Animals" that is eerily one-dimensional, but it's a prelude to an even better concept album to come. Though it's not Waters' creative apex (that would be The Wall (Deluxe Packaging Digitally Remastered), "Animals" is astoundingly excellent, profound music, and the continuation of the civil war within this band.

It could be said of most of Pink Floyd's recorded ouevre that it is something of an acquired taste. And the effort of acquiring the taste is made harder still by the subtleties of their music. That is, a Pink Floyd album will not disclose all of its facets to the listener at once. Rather, a certain amount of dedication, repeated careful review, is required to "see the whole", as it were.

This is probably truer of "Animals" than it is of any of their other work. "Animals", to begin with, lacks the lush, atmospheric Leslie-treated pianos and spacey guitars of "Meddle", or the warping, bubbling, synth-work and studio sleight-of-hand of "Dark Side" or "Wish." "Atom Heart Mother" and "The Wall" were recorded with full orchestras to assist in particularly emotional moments. Whether the orchestral experimentation of "Atom Heart Mother" and "The Wall" were successful is another question, altogether.

"Animals," then, is more of a straight-up rock and roll record than the other Floyd albums. It was basically written "on the fly," during the band's tours in support of "Wish" through '75-76. Although this is documented in interviews with Messrs. Gilmour and Water themselves, the fact could be confirmed from listening to live outings of songs from "Animals" -- they sound just like the studio versions, almost as though they were written with live, rather than studio, performance in mind. There are very little in the way of doubled instrumental parts or voices (some acoustic guitar parts are overdubbed in "Pigs", I believe, but other than that, the whole thing is basically just the four players and their voices).

The band's musical values have changed here. Gone are Gilmour and Wright's airy harmonizations from "Dark Side" and "Meddle", to be replaced by the throatier growling and ranting of Roger Waters, who sings almost the entirety of the album's lyrics. Gilmour sings the very beginning of "Dogs" ("You've gotta have a real need/Gotta sleep on your toes").

And the instrumental sound, or the approach, perhaps, has changed as well. Here, the guitar-playing of Gilmour takes on a decidedly more aggressive, charged, attitude. Witness, for example, the ragged outbursts between the first few verses of "Dogs"; Gilmour, although always capable of emotional depth, rarely chooses to depict raw anger in his solos.

The angriest moment comes at the finish of "Pigs." The song, which has built up nice bit of rhythmic tension with its half-time feel and the suggestive in-drawn breaths from Roger Waters in the final verse, suddenly lets loose with Gilmour's cataclysmic outro-solo.

The solo starts with the same note repeated almost a dozen times, picked hard (much harder than Gilmour's usually genteel touch), beat to within an inch of its life. He moves up the neck into stratospheric territory, then, in a musical gesture recalling Milton's description of Satan's defeat ("Hurled headlong flaming from th' ethereal sky/With hideous ruin and combustion down"), plummets back down with a series of triplets that return almost all the way to first position.

The intensity builds back up, until Gilmour finds a rapid-fire sixteenth-note triplet arpgeggio near the top of the neck and rides it out through the fade. This is not the beautiful, sensitive Gilmour we know from "Wish You Were Here," or "On the Turning Away." It is another personality altogether, but one capable of searing intensity.

Perhaps, in the final analysis, Gilmour's mastery is demonstrated by the fact that -- knowing that he could solo in the white-hot vein of an Eric Clapton or Robin Trower, say -- he chooses not to do so all of the time. The rareness of such an outburst -- I could almost say its uniqueness, but for the slightly less brillant solo of a similar emotional tenor at the end of "Comfortably Numb" -- is part of what makes it great.

Gilmour never quite equaled this moment at the end of "Pigs" in any of his subsequent outings. While "Comfortably Numb" is comparable, it does not quite echo the rawness of tone here. Also of note is some of the playing on his first solo album of 1977, "David Gilmour" (although there the emotional content seems to be more "woe" or "tragedy").

Furthermore, these are Waters's best lyrics -- they are by turns creepy, funny (some of the double-entendre in "Pigs On The Wing"), and accurate (the spot-on businessman psychoanalysis of "Dogs").