Another shape for Sheep
Sheep, Dogs and Roger Waters’s Young Nicholas Jon provide the musical starting point for Animals 50. Sony’s edition, due on 22 January, places unheard versions beside the original album. Sheep’s original radio edit is already available. Offering another edit of the same piece gives listeners a different way into its arrangement. Heard apart from its place in the album sequence, that version changes where a comparison can begin.[1]
David Gilmour recalls the Animals period as a move toward a more stripped-back and direct sound. He presents punk’s influence as a possibility. That recollection may open a useful question when approaching the newly offered Sheep and Dogs versions: how does that directness take shape in an arrangement? This is where the edition becomes interesting to me. The anniversary provides an occasion to hear different choices around the same work, without assigning every choice to a single account of its era.[1]
The whole Oakland concert
The complete 1977 Oakland Coliseum Arena concert supplies another basis for comparison. Filmed by Reinhard Hohlwein as a teenager, it brings a live sequence alongside the additional studio recordings. An alternative version of one song and an entire concert ask for different kinds of listening. The former brings arrangement choices forward; the latter directs attention to the order of works across an evening. That distinction gives the additions separate musical uses.[1]
The 64-page book includes Jonathan Lethem’s writing, an interview with Hohlwein and Aubrey Powell’s recollections of the cover. Photographs from the sessions, the Battersea Power Station cover shoot and the tour make the album’s surroundings visible. The named works remain at the centre of the listening. In assessing Animals 50, I would give particular weight to Sheep’s edit, the Dogs version and the Oakland concert sequence. The most useful comparison offered by the edition lies between studio choice and live order.[1]