I have an odd tendency to love many acts’ generally least loved albums. At one time, I would have simply chalked this up to my contrarian nature. I like to think I instead am able to consider works without influence from others. Such is the case with Pink Floyd’s Obscured by Clouds, an entry in their catalog viewed largely as a curiosity, at best, by their fanbase.
Admittedly, I was slow to discover it. Having been a fan of the band since the 1980’s, I wasn’t tempted to explore their oeuvre prior to Dark Side of the Moon until the turn of the century. Even then, record guides, assorted sites and the opinions of fellow fans led me to believe their work prior to that, but after Piper at the Gates of Dawn, was mostly for completists. The most poorly regarded seemed to be the soundtrack albums, of which this is one and the other is More.
It still feels strange to me the group was ever hired to compose music for films. But, when one scrutinizes the band’s legacy, that makes a great deal of sense. Much of their work beginning with DSOTM is so theatrical as to sometimes be like a movie for the mind. The imagery in The Wall is so strong, for example, that the eventual movie of it felt redundant.
Obscured by Clouds was made at a time when the band was on the cusp of their fortunes changing drastically, when they were on the verge of creating DSOTM, the work that would immortalize them. This is a dispatch from the band in the final moments of their time in limbo. It is a moment where one would not expect superior work to emerge, yet I find this to be one of my favorite albums of theirs. At least, it is one of the few of theirs I would actually describe as fun.
Recorded in only two weeks, there is a relaxed vibe throughout. That doesn’t equate to “lazy” or “unfocused”, two adjectives I would apply to the earlier, bloated, double-album Ummagumma. This is a lean album by a band that knew they were about to do something radical with DSOTM, and they seem to workshop various sounds and ideas from that project here, without the heaviness and, let’s face it, archness of that masterpiece.
There are many indicators here of the directions they were about to explore. The Krautrock synths of that album’s “On The Run” are foreshadowed by this album’s title track. “Burning Bridges” feels like a proto-“Us And Them”. This track is given an instrumental reprise with “Mudmen”, which is similar to the recurring musical motifs on the album which followed this one. The slow churning funk of ”Childhood’s End” feels like a dry run for “Time”.
Then there’s the theme of aging, which is given a gentler touch here than in their work which followed. The upbeat acoustic jam of “Wot’s…Uh The Deal” is upbeat enough that the lines “there’s a chill wind blowing in my soul/and I think I’m glowing old” might glide by unnoticed. An even more energetic acoustic number, “Free Four”, is downright foot-stomping, and yet the lyrics are the perspective of an old man dying and recalling his heydays as a young man. Even the self-mythologizing nature of the band’s later work starts here, with a line about going on an American tour and going to the top of the charts.
There’s also many lines about gold. There’s a reference to alchemy in the chorus of “Wot’s…Uh The Deal” about turning lead into gold. There’s also references to the color, such as “midnight blue/burning gold” in “Stay”. The most blatant reference is the track title “The Gold It’s In The…” What’s really odd is I don’t think the pursuit of gold was a major plot element of film for which this is the soundtrack, 1972’s The Valley. Then again, the film left so little impression on me during my single viewing that I can recall little that happened and have no intention of revisiting it.
What is most curious about this album is how it stands on its own without the accompanying film. If there weren’t three small images from the film on the back cover, there wouldn’t be any obvious signs this was a soundtrack. Admittedly, tracks with titles like “Mudmen” would be even bizarre without that knowledge but, hey, it was the post-hippie era which was morphing into prog. There’s also the tribal chanting at the end of “Absolutely Curtains” (the part of the album most cited as irritating), but even that could be interpretated as a metaphor for something. Reincarnation, maybe?
But the absolute greatest surprise of Obscured by Clouds is freely and blissfully they rock out on “The Gold It’s In The…”. When one thinks about it, Pink Floyd is a band that rarely rocks. The closest track in their extensive catalog which compares to this is “The Nile Song”, which bordered on early heavy metal (no, really!). And that track came from More, which was…their other soundtrack album. I suspect this was a group who could let themselves go when creating a work for hire.