Pink Floyd, “Animals” (2018 Remix).

One of the hills I am prepared to die on is that Animals is the best album by Pink Floyd.

My relationship with the 1977 album stretches back more than 30 years, and I know those five iconic songs better than I know some of my friends. After years of intra-band squabbling, a deluxe edition of Pink Floyd’s Animals is here, remixed, remastered and repackaged with new cover art, offered up on every format imaginable.

While the changes aren’t dramatic—there are no new arrangements or significant overdubs—this is more than a spit and polish. Listening to the new mix is like looking at the familiar musical landscape with new glasses: there’s a sharpness and clarity that adds significantly to the informed listening experience.

As I don’t know anyone who has a Dolby 5.1 Stereo setup who was willing to let me come over and listen, I had to content myself with a nice pair of headphones. There may be significant movement in the stereo field that I wasn’t able to appreciate. I’ll have to leave that to the more fully equipped audiophiles (who are, admittedly, the target audience for this).

You won’t hear much sonic difference in Roger Waters’ stripped-down acoustic ballad “Pigs on the Wing.” But the magic emerges during the dense wall-of-sound extended jams. There are bowel-shaking bass notes at various points throughout the new mix, which, if they were there before, certainly weren’t as intense. One particularly powerful punch of bass adds to the drama on “Dogs” when Waters sings, “The bad blood slows and turns to stone.” A fatter, beefier bass undergirds David Gilmour’s solo on “Dogs,” which sounds as smooth as cake frosting.

There’s a new fidelity to Richard Wright’s beautiful keyboard work on the album. The new granular sonic details include a flanger effect on Wright’s atmospherics during “Dogs” — you know; when the dogs are barking. By the way, I’m pretty sure they’re the same dogs. There seems to be a slightly different keyboard part on “Sheep,” just before the Lord’s Prayer.

The album’s masterpiece is “Pigs (Three Different Ones),” which, born out of the bleakness and political nihilism of the 1970s, is almost too on the nose in describing today’s political and cultural landscape. Calling out the false patriotism that too often masks the corruption and greed of politicians, Waters sings, “And when your hand is on your heart/ You’re nearly a good laugh/ Almost a joker/ With your head down in the pig bin/ Saying, ‘Keep on digging’/ Pig stain on your fat chin/ What do you hope to find?/ Down in the pig mine/ You’re nearly a laugh/ You’re nearly a laugh/ But you’re really a cry.”

The way the music and lyrics slice at inauthenticity with sneering cynicism before revealing an even greater tragedy lies beneath the mask captures the essence of the nascent global fascist movement we’ve watched coalesce in real time.

I don’t mind telling you that it moved me to tears.

“That’s what you get for pretending the danger’s not real,” Waters chides on “Sheep.” “Meek and obedient you follow the leader/ Down well-trodden corridors into the valley of steel.”

While casual listeners may not hear any differences in the mix, serious fans will relish the newly added sonic filigree. And this album, now nearly 50 years old, and newly resplendent, has something terrifying and important to say about the world we live in today.