Making heads or tails of Animals

By Patrick Keller

I've tried every approach known to man to try and get some insight into Pink Floyd's Animals. I've done research. I've listened to it repeatedly. I've studied the artwork backwards and forwards. I've listened to it again. Nothing.

Thing is, I am just not a terribly big fan of the album. It's far too nihilistic. Especially given the stage of my life I'm in, entering the workforce and exploring relationships, Waters' bleak view of modern society is unrelenting. That's part of the appeal, I know. In fact, amongst Internet fans, Animals is continually regarded as among the highest--if not the highest--considered Pink Floyd album in polls.

 
I am just not a terribly big fan of the album. It's far too nihilistic.
 

The music is certainly strong, and fits the subject matter to a "T," but again, the dissonance of some of the passages can be almost painful. Which means I have to be in a particular mood--that is, extremely permissive and unencumbered--to even consider listening to the album without fear of altering or worsening my mood.

However, it does contain one of my all-time favorite Floyd songs, "Sheep". It remains one of my great disappointments that I never got to (nor am I ever likely to) hear Gilmour perform that orgasmic, hair-raising outro solo live. I have heard a few Animals tracks live, however--"Dogs" and "Pigs on the Wing", live on Waters' 1999 tour--and found "Dogs" particularly improved. The song was much more lush and expansive under Roger's new band, especially the introduction as handled by the multitalented Jon Carin. Plus, the quadrophonic sound, allowing you to be surrounded by the sound landscape during the central keyboard break, is indescribable and overpowering. Plus, the weight of the matter was considerably lessened by Roger's and the rest of the band's taking a break in the middle to play cards.

Actually, it never occurred to me until now, but I believe that "Dogs" is really the only reason I find Animals so difficult to listen to. Its raw cynicism and vitriolic anger on top of the harshest-sounding Pink Floyd music ever put to record make it genuinely hard to stomach without a little indigestion. I thoroughly enjoy "Pigs (Three Different Ones)", which is the last time Pink Floyd tried to play Funk (the other times being the beginning of the second half of "Echoes" and that bit in "Atom Heart Mother"). Nothing like a little Prog Funk to brighten your day. Plus, the lyrics in that song aren't exactly the kind that fit the average listener. They are aimed more externally than internally. "Pigs" is the kind of song you want to crank when you've been cut off in traffic. "Dogs" is the kind of song that you want to turn down so you can't hear the lyrics.

 
So there we have it. An album ruined by "Dogs"... I don't hate the song, I just have trouble listening to it.
 

I see nothing wrong with the inconsequential (better not let Roger hear me say that) bookends to the album, "Pigs on the Wing", part the first and part deuce. Personally, I prefer the "joined" version with the Snowy White guitar solo in it, as it seems more like a song and less like a snippet. Either way, taken on the level of a song, "Pigs on the Wing" is pretty, brief, and even a little bittersweet.

So there we have it. An album ruined by "Dogs". Okay, so "ruined" is a bit of an overstatement. I don't hate the song, I just have trouble listening to it.

Maybe that's what Roger wanted. Not everything needs to be easily digestible. At the time, rock 'n' roll was all aflutter with the punk movement, which was anything but. And "Dogs" is likely Pink Floyd's version of punk: anger at the establishment, at the unthinking, unfeeling oppressors who don't even realize the effects of their status.

Pretty easy statement for a 30-year-old millionaire to make, if you ask me. Reminds me of the (perhaps apocryphal) story Gilmour once told about Roger's vocal embrace of socialism only to turn around and buy a mansion. But I digress.

I know I'm just begging for angry mail from "Dogs" fans. But I would hope they could chalk it up to a matter of taste. After all, the fact that I still have trouble listening to the song almost twenty-five years later is remarkable. Either things have changed very little, or the song is universal enough to always be applicable. Or both. Now there's a scary thought. Roger Waters isn't a songwriter, he's a prophet.

Maybe I should give it another listen...

Patrick Keller is a staff writer for Spare Bricks.


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