Continuing on my first review of ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’, I have decided to write about my favourite album of all time, also by Pink Floyd. ‘Animals’ was the tenth album by the band, released in 1977, and showed a massive change from Pink Floyd’s previous albums, being heavily political and focusing on themes such as capitalism and the novel Animal Farm by Orwell. Although not as commercially successful as ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ or ‘The Wall’, ‘Animals’ captured the troubled economic and social issues in 1970’s Britain with amazing 10+ minute concept rock, poignant lyrics and eery background noises of animals – Pigs, Dogs and Sheep.
Based on Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’, the album uses the motif of animals to show the class divide of life in Britain in the 1970s. The ‘Dogs’, represent the aggressive, ruthless world of business, where you have ‘to be trusted by the people that lie to… So that when they turn their backs on you, You’ll get the chance to put the knife in’. Behind Gilmour’s impeccable solo at 5:31 lies the businessmen, waiting ‘to pick out the easy meat…to strike when the moment is right’. The ‘Pigs’ represent the wealthy upper class, who control the lower classes in the ‘pig bin’ to, as Waters says, encourage them to fight between each other. The ‘Sheep’ represent people in the lower classes who blindly follow the Pigs, unquestioning and unprepared for ‘the dogs that may be about’, and finishes from a robotic voice proclaiming a Christian prayer, starting ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want’ – an obvious attack on the robotic, unquestioning nature of religion and its followers.
Packaged with an image of an inflatable Pig between the towers of Battersea Powerstation, the album reached number 2 in the UK Albums Chart and number 3 on the US Billboards 100, going platinum 4 times. NME perfectly encapsulated the feel on ‘Animals’, calling it ‘one of the most extreme, relentless, harrowing and downright iconoclastic hunks of music to have been made available this side of the sun’.
When I heard ‘Animals’ for the first nearly 2 years ago, I was amazed mainly by the musical aspect of the album. Slow, powerful solos, resonant vocals and the shear length of the album was something I had never heard before. The lyrics were almost obscured by the musical brilliance of the album. But behind this lies something similar that Pink Floyd did only 2 years later with ‘The Wall’ – an attack on the societal nature at the time. Much like ‘The Wall’ brought to life the problems with education, drug abuse, depression and insanity, ‘Animals’ brings to life the fractured nature of our society. 40 years after its release, ‘Animals’ is still relevant, questioning the nature of the ‘Pigs’, the ‘Dogs’ and the ‘Sheep’ in life, and how, as the album beautifully portrays, the ‘Sheep’ can rise up against the ‘Pigs’ and the ‘Dogs’. I would recommend listening to this album in its entirety without interruption to really encapsulate its brilliance.
Comments