Pink Floyd - Obscured by Clouds - Album Review

[Floyd]

Pink Floyd’s second collaboration with Franco-Swiss director Barbet Schroeder is less uneven than the first, though this soundtrack to French film La Vallée is not without some peaks and valleys of its own. Interestingly, the material for Obscured by Clouds was written and recorded when the band had already begun working on the seminal Dark Side of the Moon. Touches of that classic album are apparent in the dreamy soundscapes of “Burning Bridges” and “Mudmen”, though to call Obscured by Clouds a preface of anything meaningful is revisionist history at best. For every “Burning Bridges” or “Wots … Uh The Deal” (the latter a beautiful, slightly playful Gilmour ballad), there’s a forgettable instrumental that belies how rushed this recording session was for the band. Granted, the only truly unforgivable song on the album is “The Gold It’s In The…”, a by-the-books rocker that sounds suspiciously like a few of the tunes on The Beatles’ White Album. In any case, it’s not Floyd doing what Floyd does best, and it would soon be all too appropriately obscured by the band’s first bona fide classic.

Track Listing
1. Obscured by Clouds
2. When You're In
3. Burning Bridges
4. The Gold it's in the...
5. Wots...Uh the Deal
6. Mudmen
7. Childhood's End
8. Free Four
9. Stay
10. Absolutely Curtains