D.D.
PS: For me, DSOTM, WYWH and Animals > The Wall which is a big, sprawling hot mess by Side Four and if I were to choose only one of the former three to have here to listen to, it would be Animals which I think was always underrated. Gilmour's playing on that album alone would be reason enough...Which isn't to say he didn't play some stunning music on The Wall, 'cuz he did. I think that lyrically, the first three dealt with more universally-relatable themes ( less so WYWH, perhaps ) but The Wall seemed to deal primarily with the gooey contents of Roger Waters' psyche and we all know how that ended up - cue up The Final Cut ...Tough thing to edit a concept album like The Wall , though... hack off too much and you lose whatever narrative there is, don't edit enough and you end up with...well, this. Still, that being said, in the same sense that as Lou Reed put it,"My best day is better than your best year", any of these PF albums is better than many bands' entire catalogues and certainly better than much of what is on this or other such lists of "necessary" music.
But that's just my opinion...and I could be wrong.
Right there with you D.D. And I may be wrong too. One of the things that makes Animals such a great record is that as a concept record, it is tight. Atom Heart is horrible, DSOTM was a huge step forward, and The Wall goes too far.
And The Wall is edited: Some of the leftovers got used on The Final Cut, while other bits surface in The Wall film. And that doesn't include the 45 RPM single of When The Tigers Broke Free b/w an alternate version of Bring The Boys Back Home (better than the one used on the LP, in my not-so-humble opinion), which indicates on the back of the sleeve that the tracks are from the forthcoming The Final Cut.
Roger has been airing out his Daddy Issues and scooping out his psyche since Obscured By Clouds (at least). Animals strikes a perfectly listenable balance/blend of High Concept (Waters) and Outstanding Performance (particularly Gilmour and Wright).
