Pink Floyd – “Obscured By Clouds” (1972)

Let us for once be honest with each other, put our masks aside and show our true selves - if there’s any Pink Floyd record from the 70s you can skip it’s this. If a different band than PF had made this album I, and many others, had certainly appreciated it in a different way. But when you're a band like today's main attraction you expect something better. So my judgement may be a bit unfair but at the same time it’s a proof of Pink Floyd's greatness.

Obscured By Clouds is the soundtrack to the French film La Vallée (The Valley in English) by director Barbet Schroeder. The band went to France and recorded the album in about two weeks. The film is about a number of people who go into the jungle in New Guinea searching for a mythical place - "the valley obscured by clouds". Although I was a little negative above towards the album it’s no doubt better than the movie which I found pretty boring when I saw it. My only reason to see it was of course that PF had made the soundtrack, this led me to believe that the film would be really cool. But no.

The songs are generally of lower standard than PF songs usually are, I also miss the wholeness PF albums often are. Obscured By Clouds feels more like a number of individual songs than an album. Compared with the band's previous album Meddle or the subsequent Dark Side Of The Moon there’s a big difference concerning this. Maybe it's because it's a soundtrack where the music is primarily designed to fit in a movie and its different scenes, it may make it harder to create a wholeness.

There are also few songs on the album that move me in any way or impress me. Compared with what Pink Floyd had created previously or was going to during the years after, which could be psychedelic, bombastic, powerful, pretentious and/or very beautiful, the songs on Obscured By Clouds are relatively bland. Some of the songs are instrumental while others are with song. Some are a little bit druggy, some are slow ‘ballads’ while others are more rock’n roll, but no one is on my top 10 list of PF's best songs.

So, no absolute need to have the record in your collection if you’re not a Pink Floyd fan (as I am). Then you must of course have it. Now and then I pick it out and let it spin on the turntable. Pink Floyd is still Pink Floyd.

 

Favorite tracks

Obscured By Clouds

When You’re In

Burning Bridges

 

Tracklist

Side A

1. "Obscured by Clouds" 3:03

2. "When You're In" 2:30

3. "Burning Bridges" 3:29

4. "The Gold It's in the..." 3:07

5. "Wots...Uh the Deal" 5:08

6. "Mudmen" 4:20

 

Side B

7. "Childhood's End" 4:31

8. "Free Four" 4:15

9. "Stay" 4:05

10. "Absolutely Curtains" 5:52