Pink Floyd

Possibly the coldest music ever committed to tape, Animals is a negative trip with unbelievably cool guitars (four minutes into "Dogs" and all of "Sheep"), brain-shattering synthesizers (animal sounds continually turn into coded messages from the Grim Reaper) and songs longer than should be legally allowed. Still, it's near perfect.

For Pink Floyd, space has always been the ultimate escape. It still is, but now definitions
have shifted. The romance of outer space has been replaced by the horror of spacing out.
This shift has been coming for a while. There was Dark Side of the Moon and "Brain
Damage," Wish You Were Here and the story of founding member Syd Barrett, the "Crazy
Diamond." And now there's Animals, a visit to a cacophonous farm where what y... More >

This has its share of obvious moments. But I can only assume that those who accuse this band of repetitious cynicism are stuck in such a cynical rut themselves that a piece of well-constructed political program music--how did we used to say it?--puts them uptight. Lyrical, ugly, and rousing, all in the right places. (Grade - B+)