Obscured By Clouds (Pink Floyd, 1972)

Obscured By Clouds is a weird detour in the Pink Floyd road from the loss of Syd Barrett to their ultimate accomplishment, The Dark Side of the Moon. From around 1968 to 1970 the band was in a kind of sonic wilderness, untethered from Syd Barrett's psychedelic visions, yet not finding any strong new direction. In hindsight, one can see the pathway, though I'm sure it wasn't clear to anyone, least of all the band, during that period. In that 20/20 vision of Pink Floyd, it is evident that something near a masterpiece was just over the horizon with the release of Meddle in 1971. Yet that was not the immediate pre-Dark Side album. That honor goes to this album, a soundtrack to a French film most people probably haven't seen.

Pink Floyd wasn't new to soundtrack work, having provided music for the films More and Zabriskie Point, art house films of the day. While the band wasn't destitute, I'm sure the extra income from these projects was appreciated, and the music, particularly in the case of More, was likely more enduring than the films themselves. While the non-soundtrack Meddle raised the profile of the band to heights not seen since 1967, the road to the next album took one last trip back through soundtrack work.

Obscured By Clouds certainly isn't the greatest Pink Floyd album by anyone's definition. It starts with two instrumentals that I frequently cannot tell apart from each other, though they are using synthesizers like never before. The closer is equally aimless, with a bunch of "native" music at the end which might make more sense if I had seen the movie. It's what between these songs that makes the album worth checking out, although some of the titles are...strange. "The Gold It's In The..." is a genuine early 1970's straight ahead rocker which makes later songs like "Money" seem dreamy. But then you get something like "Wot's...Uh the Deal", a relaxing folksy number with some of the sweetest vocals David Gilmour has ever laid down. Richard Wright is busy too, with slow but powerful songs like "Burning Bridges", "Stay", and "Mudmen", an instrumental reinterpretation of the former song. Finally of note is the last song Gilmour would write all by himself until 1987, "Childhood's End", probably the star of the album.

The story continues with The Dark Side of the Moon, of course. The roles of Wright and drummer Nick Mason would greatly diminish from that album onward, while Roger Waters would continue to capitalize on the success of his songwriting. While Waters has plenty of assists from Gilmour and Wright on this album, he largely took on the bulk of the writing going forward from here, including all of the lyrics.