Some years ago I read biographies of the Beatles and Pink Floyd one after the other, and having finished the latter I remember thinking “gods, Pink Floyd look like grown adults next to the Fabs”. That said, the bullshit over the liner notes to the 2018 remix of Animals that meant it took four years to finally come out demonstrated that when all’s said and done Gilmour and Waters are still pissy little children at heart. Syd would’ve been more than usually bemused had he lived that long…
Anyway, I gave said remix another listen tonight… don’t know how great the differences are beyond one or two really obvious ones, more a case of the overall sound being kind of bigger and fuller. Works fine for me either way. Like Low, which came out only a week before this, it looks like a strange album to have appeared in 1977 when punk was starting to blossom, and yet, in its way, it was also about as punk as Pink Floyd could’ve got… also the point where they really turned into the Roger Waters Band; with Gilmour only contributing to one song and Wright not writing anything, Roger was running the show. Given how miserable the ensuing tour seems to have been for all involved (with Wright threatening to quit at one point), maybe the show should’ve stopped there? But then, of course, the misery of the experience gave Roger the idea for another album…
