ATOM HEART MOTHER

''Atom Heart Mother'' in my humble opinion is one of 2-3 most underrated albums of the entire P.F discography. At that time, they seemed to invest a growing amount of time and effort to the enrichment of their orchestrations and to the perfection of their sound. Alan Parson's production is excellent, allowing many new ideas and experimentations to rise on the surface. The quartet act collectively as equals (this wouldn't last...) and there's a wide variety of influences and new directions.

We have to divide ''A.H.M'' in two parts. The opening and the closing song are two epics of different artistic background: The ''A.H.M suite'' is a magnificent 23 minutes long beast that shows a band overflowing with inspiration and confidence. Here we find classical arrangements, exciting choir parts, Gilmour's guitars of genius and Water's definitive bass lines, in a perfect composition. ''Alan's psychedelic breakfast'' is, basically, what the title says. P.F flirts with psych and avant garde in a funny, yet innovative track.

The rest of the album is 5 shorter tracks that belong clearly to the folk/psych side of things. Nice tunes, lighter than air, far away from all intellectuality and much closer to the hippie mood of the time. Don't forget, this is 1970. I want to mention specially the song ''If''. While it's almost a Simon & Garfunkel kind of happy tune, one can sense for the first time the sarcasm of Water's performance and lyrics, like a distant connection between this and The Wall's desperate cynicism is established. One of the great, relatively unknown P.F tracks.

This should be regarded as a masterpiece but P.F was destined to reach such heights that four stars seem fair enough. 91/100