PERSONAL GEMS: Pink Floyd - Animals

It’s about time for another classic Will Bamber navel-gaze as I wax fanatical about the albums that I adore, specifically albums that I’ve always adored, over the greater part of my music-worshipping life, particularly those I fell in love with as a dreamy-eyed teenager, and what better place to start than with the most underrated album from the first band I ever truly loved – the band that revealed to me how music could be so much more than pop hooks and catchy choruses. Whether I do any more of these is up in the air, but talking about this particular album has been a long time coming. It’s the dark, the ambitious, the inimitable, the wild, the soaring, the tragically cathartic masterpiece that is Pink Floyd’s Animals.

I’m dropping my usual charade of acting like a music journalist – this blog post is gonna be fast and loose, straight from the heart, of how and why this album captivated me, continues to floor me with every listen, and why you shouldn’t risk going your entire life without at least allowing it a chance to burrow into your soul. It may be cringe, but it’s nothing but the truth.

A Gentle Reminder That Free Speech Doesn't Absolve You

Ricky Gervais has been pissing me off recently, which is disheartening, as I’ve always been a huge fan of the fruits of his now long-historic golden age. The Office is a near-masterpiece in my opinion, and Extras was, if a little mawkish, a self-aware and timely satire. This makes it even more perplexing that the very societal problems that Ricky Gervais mocked and used as the basis of Extras's morality seem to have rotted from his own memory. Remember how Andy Millman’s character was transformed by his sudden fame into a thoughtless, self-centred arsehole and the series closed with him rediscovering his humility? I wonder if the Ricky Gervais I bear witness to on Twitter nowadays, who spends most of his time reminding everyone how clearly enlightened and subversive he is, would be capable of reaching the same moment of clarity.