Three 65, Day 28
Pink Floyd, Animals

I'm not feeling so good, so I needed an album with very few songs to review. At 3 songs (plus two bookends), Animals fits the bill nicely.

A little history lesson: Pink Floyd's run can be divided into four eras - the Barrett era, the band era, the Waters era, and the Gilmour era. Animals comes from the short but potent Waters era, when bassist and vocalist Roger Waters held firm control over the group's creative output. A nihilist at heart, Waters wanted to record a concept album (and aren't they all concept albums, after all) that echoed George Orwell's seminal novel "Animal Farm."

He certainly got the overall mood right. Animals is dark, twisted, and forbidding, breaking down the human race into "Dogs" (the power-hungry ladder-climbers), "Pigs" (self-righteous rule-makers), and "Sheep" (the rest of us). "Dogs," clocking in at 17 minutes and definitely the longest song on the album, twists and turns through its multiple moods, with the vocals often fading off into the distance or transforming themselves into another sound entirely through the magic of the studio. "Pigs" is suitably sarcastic ("ha ha / charade you are"), while "Sheep," which uses the same vocal effect from "Dogs," is a more upbeat number, this time chronicling the rebellion of the downtrodden.

Pink Floyd has a lot of albums in their catalog, and most of them are pretty unique. Animals is, too. Some people can't stand the overall sense of doom and pessimism that pervades the recording, but hey, that's Floyd for you.

I'm going to go take some aspirin now and lay down, thanks...