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.
Animals is an
album from Pink Floyd’s 1970s golden age, stretching from their
unevenly-experimental Meddle all the
way up to The Wall, the apex of their
self-indulgent prog ambition. This was the period when they could knock out bold,
operatic concept albums of unquestionable mastery, all similarly amazing, but
each of which also carried a unique soul and spirit. Animals is a particularly odd creation, even for Floyd, comprising
of three long suites bookended by two variations of the same short, simple “love
song” (maybe). The concepts hang heavy here, and the songs are distinctly
narrative and clearly written with the intention to make a point. Borne from
the grim wasteland of late-seventies British politics, and taking clear Orwellian
inspiration, there are three epic central tracks here – ‘Dogs’, ‘Pigs’ and ‘Sheep’,
all allegories for the bleak and filthy archetypes that covered the landscape
of the pre-Thatcher environment, the same one which the timelessly beautiful
album cover portrays in all its industrial portent.
Let’s start with my favourite – ‘Dogs’ – the longest and, by some estimates, darkest of the lot, written as a cautious lament to the ruthless enforcers that thrived mercilessly amongst the crooked capitalism and underhanded political squabbles of the time. Despite the clear disdain Waters has towards these titular creatures, with their club ties and firm handshakes concealing their desire for the chance to ‘put the knife in’, the song is, in many ways, a tragic eulogy. The lyrics describe the life of one of these go-getters, with the central metaphor being the weight that they throw around eventually becoming the millstones around their neck that drag them to ruin. But unlike some of the more heavy-handed concept albums such as King Crimson’s oeuvre or The Who’s rough early pioneering, the delicate ambiguity isn’t stifled by the specificities within the lyrics. What makes this, and any truly great concept album really work, is the interplay between the words and the music. The actual composition of this piece is nothing short of genius – how it eases between its many sections, moving from soft melancholy to despair to hope to muted paranoia to bitter aggression to funereal demise. The lyrics provide the context, but the music presents the scene, a cinematic rhapsody that plays before the eye of your mind, and has you travelling the emotion of its seventeen-minute world with effortless precision. It culminates with a powerful summary, an acrid yet poetically tragic list of short, sharp stabs of imagery that tie the story into a perfectly-orchestrated piece of musical fiction, giving you all the necessary pieces for a story of your own to unfold. It’s no secret that when music and narrative collide, you’ll find me at my happiest, and few things encapsulate this particular passion of mine than this fucking corker right here.
We move on to ‘Pigs’, an allegorical animal that needs no introduction – greedy, hypocritical, self-indulgent swine. The mood of this song is far jauntier than the previous, the cowbell-clonking lyrical passages dripping with irony, with complete mocking contempt being spat at the sometimes-anonymous-sometimes-Mary-Whitehouse characters that make up the verses. The guitar bends sleazily, conjuring cartoonish images of cigar-smoking Napoleons grunting with muck-slavered faces as they sit contemptuously on the weight of the undeserving poor. While there’s a light-ish tone happening here, the middle movement shifts gears as the cartoon villains descend further into their bestial abasement. The harmonica creaks sinisterly, as the vocoder pig-grunts get louder and more restless, the mocking jocularity dissolving as the true heinousness of the Pigs is conveyed, ending with a frustrated guitar solo that fades into the distance as the swine continue glutting themselves into our pessimistic future. Once again, the concept is there, but the music does the heavy lifting, and a story is weaved before you without a word needing to be spoken.
And finally, there’s ‘Sheep’, where the narrative focus
shifts from the villainous oppressors to the apathetically oppressed, and is
the song where at least a twisted sort of hope manifests itself. From the
tranquil opening of bleating and meadowgrass, the tempo leaps to its feet and the
panic of their true situation is made clear – fattened, enfeebled and doomed to
be sliced into consumer goods. ‘What do you get for pretending the danger’s not
real?’ is one of the lyrics that could most easily be separated from the
farmyard analogy, as relevant in its simplicity back then as it is to our
frightening present. Things may have always seemed fine, but the thundering
rhythm of the track assures you of how in actuality things are most urgently
not. The track swaggers in and out of calm, each bombastic segment feeling like
a rally to arms, and each murky, downbeat moment feeling like a moment of
slothful abandon – by no means relaxed, but rather deliriously tranquilised,
almost lobotomised, the sound of the inside of a mind as it lays buried firmly
in the sand. But a rare flash of optimism pulls the titular cattle from their
slumber as ‘Wave upon wave of demented avengers march cheerfully out of
obscurity into the dream’ (Yeah, I love the lyrics to this one), and the murderous
order is violently overthrown, ending with a triumphant, catchy and strangely
life-affirming guitar riff that serves as the song’s happy, if a little
blood-soaked, curtain call, and tranquillity is finally returned.
The two bookend tracks, both titled ‘Pigs on the Wing’, are
folky, chirpy, and concerned with a strong premise running through this pop-up
storybook of a fiercely political album – caring for one another. The landscape
of Animals is a muddy, capricious,
savagely competitive world teetering on the brink of a nihilistic wilderness,
which I guess makes sense in the context of the album’s title. But as I myself
fret in 2018 about the serious compassion shortage and the ominously uncaring social
paradigms that the world sinks deeper into, something about this album still
feels eerily pertinent. Although
people point to The Wall and Wish You Were Here and Dark Side of the Moon as the best
concept albums Pink Floyd had to offer, to me, Animals will always be their greatest accomplishment in crafting an
album that plays like a novel, and affects you with the same catharsis, attacks
you in the same recesses of your artistic comprehension. With every minute, you’re
taken down a tightly-constructed tapestry of ideas, emotions, images,
atmospheres and moments of demented qualia, and, if you’re anything like me, it
leaves your soul reeling from an untouched, unseen experience. You can laugh
all you want at how much of this album’s wiener I’m slurping on, but the truth
is that if you can sit and listen to this entire album with a spliff in your
hand and the image of David Cameron’s stupid face in your mind and not feel something, then frankly all you
deserve is my pity.
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