Pink Floyd
Animals

An inexhaustible mine of emotions. With each listen, new nuggets that shine in our hands, and the confirmation that we were right to trust this work of theirs, a bit in the shadow of their more famous classics.
We are between "Wish You Were Here" and "The Wall", and it shows.

Waters' focus, who previously preferred more intimate, poetic, and lyrically transfigured themes, now begins an analytical descent into the more intrinsically human and terribly concrete aspects of the individual, allowing himself to be captured by the social, capitalist perversion and its intrinsic return to a Paleolithic conception of the strongest, now aided by the indifference and apathy of the majority. His visionary flair leads him to pour into the music and lyrics the depravity and degradation of this system, doing so with the fineness that distinguishes his songwriting. In the lyrics, indeed, all the typical elements of this new society, where roles are few and well-defined, have a voice: Dogs, pigs, or sheep. The reference to Orwellian allegory is immediate. And indeed, even here, pigs are cynical and unhappy exploiters, but proud and jealous of their possessions, the sheep are the unknowing and naive masses led by the dogs to the slaughterhouse. The latter are assigned the most cruel and perverse role, that of those who are deeply disgusted by the worldly reality and, in their self-loathing, yet allow themselves to be permeated by it, fully supporting its logic. Now this subspecies of inhumane ecosystem is complete and irreversibly set on the path to self-destruction.

This is Waters' way of dealing with concrete topics; his personality imposes an almost dreamlike, hyperbolic, and sharp interpretation of his surroundings, and this is precisely the most fascinating element of his writing, interpreted with masterful originality by Gilmour.

The album maintains a certain coherence, even though the level of intensity does not remain constant throughout the 41 minutes of the CD. A clear example of this are the two "Pigs on the Wing", which, with a tone that at first listen might seem light, ironic, irreverent, contradictory, almost out of place, introduce and conclude the album with the same melody (both in music and voice), as if to underscore the indifference of those who, despite living in this world, prefer the void and anonymity, terrified by the threats of a world now in the hands of the masters.
Cushioned in this sense by the apathy of the fearful, stand the three true tracks of the album.

Dogs: a slightly dissonant acoustic guitar accompaniment immediately joined and supported by Wright's layers and solos, Mason's drums sustaining the weight of the lyrics and David's vocal efforts, who launches, between verses, into violent, massively distorted but not invasive guitar solos, harmless, like one who, though desperate, can only harm himself.

Pigs: a track with a lively, almost playful rhythm, for lyrics sung mockingly, so much so that it leaves open the possibility (also for its fragmentation and musicality) of a non-sense intention in the songwriting.
Sheep: intro with electric piano urged on by a bass that, together with the drums, will form an obsessive, pounding rhythm section. Atmosphere suitable for the slaughter discussed; and precisely to the inhumane aberrations of the human mind seem to allude the falsetto and synth when they blend, confusing each other, almost offering us a cue for unsettling suggestions of human-machine hybrids.
The whole thing ends, as I said, with "Pigs on the Wing pt.2", in which the pigs are well reassured and proud of escaping suicide and finding their last refuge, in accordance with their absurd logic of surrender, where everything is worth doing, provided it leads to a saving escape from freedom.

...how then the four managed to encapsulate all this cumbersome material into a CD so enjoyable, sublime at times and even "energetic" at others, is unknown. But it is enough for us to intuit that this ability is encapsulated in the expressive versatility unique to the world of ART...