Animal Farm

I like Pink Floyd very much. They have handed down to Rock music history not only a fistful of memorable albums (the indisputable “Dark Side Of The Moon“, “Wish You Were Here”, the visionary “Ummagumma”, a less known gem titled “Meddle”, etc), but also a worldwide influential style due to their music, lyrics, performances… Very few times has a band been so unanimously acclaimed by public and critics.

But that symbolism which Waters and Gilmour liked so much (I think) has three great exponents: “The wall” album, the song “Wish you were here” and my favourite album, “Animals”. All of them full of that nonconformity (sometimes naïve nonconformity, but never unnecessary).

Animal farm

“Animals” is a three piece work, though there are two tiny songs titled “Pigs on a wing” with different lyrics but the same music. The remaining themes are “Dogs”, “Pigs (three different ones)” and “Sheep”, which constitute a true paradigm of Pink Floyd’s more symbolic stage.

I still have in my memory that pig-shaped balloon in the skies of the Battersea Power Station (South London), a cold and grey industrial place which configured a distressing scene.

The social criticism is obvious: people are the sum of their behaviours and their actions. In this way, they can be replaced by animals (whose conducts we always associate to cliches of human conduct). “Animals” is a reinterpretation of top seller book Animal Farm, and the perfect excuse to match Pink Floyd’s symbolism with Pink Floyd’s sense of spectacle.

Greed (“Dogs”), cynicism and hypocrisy (“Pigs”), lack of personality (“Sheep”), … A compilation of the curse of our time (still it is). Roger Waters led this true jewel: it´s not pretentious (don’t you get fooled by some people), but tries to stimulate our capacity of thinking and choosing, even from a strictly musical point of view.