Pink Floyd - Animals

Lets set the scene: it's 1977, Pink Floyd are one of the biggest bands in the world after releasing two of arguably the best albums ever recorded back to back but the Prog Rock bubble is about to be popped by kids in denim with mohawks. Yes, Punk was on the horizon and if it wasn't laced safety pins it simply wasn't cool. If Pink Floyd were going to stop themselves being consigned to the 'Old Fart' section at the back of the record shop then they were going to have to pull something mammoth out of the bag. They did just that and Animals is the result.

Not very suprisingly, it's a concept album based around George Orwell's book Animal Farm. There are three animals, the Dogs who represent the megalomanical members of society, from the police to rich businessmen. The Pigs represent the people who are actually in control like politicians and moral crusaders, such as the referenced Mary Whitehouse and finally the Sheep represent the general public, who will follow the other two blindly whatever the circumstances.

The album is bookend by two short acoustic love songs, Pigs on the Wing. These hopeful odes to companionship contrast with the three middle songs which are all much more rough and ready. Dogs is first up with both Waters and Gilmour sharing vocal duties on what seems to be a stark warning to the potentially power hungry middle classes. At nearly 20 minutes long it never seems to get tiresome and has you on edge until the final few lines bring it crashing to a close. No time to gain your composure before Pigs (Three Different Ones) kicks in, the title is an obvious reference to the three different types of Pigs mentioned in the song. Vocal duties fall solely here to Roger Waters who nasally delivers the lyrics over a sparse musical landscape of synthesizers, drums and a bit of guitar.

Pink Floyd save the best until last with the intense Sheep. A pounding anthem that while urging the masses to rise up and fight the powers that be, builds and builds until David Gilmour's outstanding guitar solo coaxes even the most suicidal listener down from their window ledge.

Like it or not, Punk and Pink Floyd were fighting the same battle. Roger Waters stripped away all the leather, hair, denim, safety pins and bad attitudes of Punk and used the values left to write Animals but just in a slightly more acceptable, English way. Some of the lyrics on the album are about as subtle as a kick in the crotch ("Bus stop rat bag, ha ha charade you are/You fucked up old hag, ha ha charade you are") but never the less it remains one of the most smart, scathing attacks on the then growing capitalist ideology of the 70's. It's an exciting, adreniline filled voyage into the mind of an increasingly alienated Roger Waters and contains more venom than Never Mind the Bollocks and Give 'Em Enough Rope put together.