Much has been written about how Animals represents a significant musical turning point for Pink Floyd. (As if to further entrench the prog credentials of “Dogs”, scholar Gilad Cohen published a journal article exclusively about the track’s composition.) Opeth borrows a central keyboard riff from the song on its 2014 album, Pale Communion, and Porcupine Tree’s 12-minute “Time Flies” is a memorable extended tribute to the song. Numerous contemporary progressive artists have tipped their hats to the album, especially the epic “Dogs”. Multiple outlets rank Animals in the top five of Pink Floyd’s best records we here at Consequence of Sound put it at number three. Yet, this has not prevented the record from leaving a distinct imprint on the musical landscape since 1977. No guitar or keyboard solos are wasted, and “suite-like” is the name of the game compositionally.įorty years after Animals ’ release, prog is a decidedly non-mainstream, even “non-cool” genre, and the songs the average layperson is likely to remember are not the sprawling epics of Animals. Parts one and two of “Pigs on the Wing” bookend the album, providing short, somewhat hopeful acoustic guitar-led tracks in an album that desperately needs some hope. On the matter of the individual songs, however, the band indulges in numerous lengthy jams, resulting in tunes that run 17 minutes (“Dogs”), 11 minutes (“Pigs ”), and 10 minutes (“Sheep”). Brevity defines the track listing and overall runtime: The record runs a concise 40 minutes spread across five tracks.
The cinematic scope of The Wall is part of its appeal, but one side-effect of its stature in the Pink Floyd canon is that it casts a shadow over its predecessor, 1977’s Animals.īeloved by Floyd diehards but infrequently heard on classic rock radio, Animals is among the proggiest of Pink Floyd’s studio LPs.
In addition to being one of Pink Floyd’s finest achievements, The Wall is one of rock music’s great double albums, both for its classic tunes (“Comfortably Numb”, “Hey You”) and political commentary. When it comes to Pink Floyd and politics, one refrain tends to ring louder than the others: “We don’t need no education!” This lyric from the schoolroom chant of “Another Brick in the Wall (Part Two)” is a distillation of the anti-fascist politics of 1979’s The Wall. Editor’s Note: This article original appeared in 2017.
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