OBSCURED BY CLOUDS

The second and last soundtrack made by Pink Floyd for Barbet Schroeder arrives between two of their fundamental albums: Meddle and The Dark Side of the Moon. If we add to this fact that the album doesn't have a concept because the songs, with the exception of Absolutely Curtains, don't have much to do with the movie, we can have an idea of why this finished to be the most obscure Pink Floyd album. Not only for its title.

Short songs, then. Probably the most "pop oriented" of their whole career and strangely one of their less selling album. The sound is midway between the A side of meddle and the B side of Atom Heart Mother but what really matters in this album is regarding the lyrics. Waters is the author of most of them, and Burning Bridges is one of the few collaborations between he and Wright, "Stay" is a sort of follow-up to "Summer 68" and "Free Four" anticipates the concept of Dark Side of the Moon: life, growing old, death and time.

It's amazing how arguments of this kind can stay in a four minutes rock song based on major chords and a quite happy melodic line. There's room for a Gilmour's solo, too.

"Wot's Oh The Deal" and "Stay" are good ballads and "Absoutely Curtains" has still some of that "Space Rock" that the Pink Floyd were about to discontinue by going to more terrestrial ambients. Regardless the title, the Dark Side of the Moon is totally about the human condition, There's very few space, unless we think that the lunatics are aliens (and of course they are not).

This album represents the way that Pink Floyd could have taken if they hadn't made Dark Side. A broken branch in their evolution tree. A must for all the Pink Floyd fans. A 3-stars album for everybody else.