OBSCURED BY CLOUDS

Maybe Obscured By Clouds is the best Pink Floyd album. I know I've cited it as my favorite before - as has Nick Mason, going by what I've heard, and even though it's missing the slow developing extended epic that's usually present on their best efforts, these are some of the best songs Pink Floyd's ever released. Recorded very close to the time of Dark Side of the Moon ("Childhood's End" is very much a post-embryonic version of "Time" both musically and lyrically), it has a very similar sound and feel, except it's not as heavy, and there are spaces between all the tracks (especially the 9 seconds of silence between tracks 2 and 3!) The opening two instrumentals, "Obscured By Clouds" and "When You're In" make a nice pair (pun intended), with the former being an ambient precursor to the latter's made for smoking a joint funk jam, with extremely well recorded snare fills. "Burning Bridges" is perfect space out music, with a super laid back feel in 3/4, very creative chord changes, adoring guitar leads, and more of those hypnotic harmonies from Gilmour and Wright. "The Gold It's In the..." and "Free Four" are decidedly more roughly played and produced than their later rockers, but I think they're better songs, the latter having lyrics that are quite humorous and intelligent. The instrumental "Mudmen" is one of the best examples of their laid-back, soaring sound, with some really trippy synths from Wright, some truly wrenching and emotional soloing from Gilmour, and more perfect snare fills from Mason. We also get another great Wright song in "Stay", and the closing instrumental finishes out with one of the first occurances of world music on a rock album, the vocals being sung by one of the actual tribes from the area where La Vallee was filmed. As of this writing, I haven't seen the film, but I think the soundtrack works even better as standalone album than More did, which was already great. Even if you only have a passing intrest in Pink Floyd, please do not overlook Obscured By Clouds.