Their crime? Setting off firecrackers while Waters was trying to sing “Pigs on the Wing.” This includes, appropriately enough, “who was trained not to spit in the fan” since later that year, Roger Waters did find himself spitting on a Pink Floyd concert goer in Montreal.
In the outro of “Dogs” (every lengthy song on this album boasts a certifiably distinct and wonderful outro), Waters rattles off the things that slowly killed the dogs’ spirits. Conveniently ignoring the existence of sheepdogs, Waters strangely enough makes the sheep the victors here, announcing “Have you heard the news? / The dogs are dead” but then reminds them that they “Better stay home / And do what you’re told.” The dogs aren’t immune to this easy corralling either. Animals‘ iconic image, the large inflatable pig that once escaped a photo shoot, teases the eye with a now-you-see-me-but-not-fully manner that only added to Pink Floyd’s overall stubborn mystique.Įveryone knows the thread going through Animals three long works are bookended by the acoustic love ditty “Pigs on the Wing.” “Dogs” are the aggressors “Pigs (Three Different Ones)” are the greedy ones who manipulate the dogs and the “Sheep” are the spineless conformists that do whatever the dogs and pigs tell them to do. Everything is much like it was before: lyrics, credits, some really attractive photographs, and the music. Unlike the reissue jobs on old albums by Yes and The Who, the regular Pink Floyd albums don’t have any bonus tracks or liner notes (Extras are supposedly saved for the Immersion boxsets). This new edition is louder, but it’s not a tremendous difference. Does the 2011 reissue of Animals sound better than the 1994 reissue? The short answer is yes. Since this is a reissue, we will get the repressing details out of the way first.
The rest of it stands the test of time as good old-fashioned anti-conformist rock and roll. The most magically aligned moments of Animals feel like they belong to a decade that never really existed. You can’t really say that it was ahead of its time because, in some cases, it feels like time has yet to catch up with them. The music that Pink Floyd accomplished during the ’70s has never felt like an artifact of the ’70s, nor does it sound like a compartmentalization of the ’60s. But I’ve always felt, before and after the recent EMI remaster campaign complete with the celebratory flying of a replica pig over Battersea Power Station, that with a slight shift in perspective, Animals can be every bit of as surprising and steadfast a milestone as Dark Side of the Moon. As I grew older, people’s negative opinions of this album became better articulated for me: The band was beginning to be all about Roger Waters at this point, as David Gilmour’s influence in Pink Floyd was sinking to its eventual low-point, they were losing their audience to the punk kids: yadda yadda, four legs bad. As me, my brother, and various acquaintances of his were pillaging the band’s back catalog to find out what made this wondrous band tick, I was repeatedly told to steer clear of 1977’s Animals. Pink Floyd was my first musical love, and the album Animals was my first experience in encountering and cherishing something that others did not care for.
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