OBSCURED BY CLOUDS

I view Obscured By Clouds as Pink Floyd's transitional album from their more psychedelic and experimental music to the symphonic sound that dominates their later albums. The album has a hint of Dark Side of the Moon coming through, but it isn't quite their both instrumentally and production-wise. Compositionally there are some good moments, but most of the songs are decent at best.

The album opens with the title track which is an instrumental. This is ok; it has some nice guitar work but is otherwise uninteresting.

'When You're In' is one of the two "rockers" of the album. It is definitely one of the heavier songs of Pink Floyd's discography, but it works, in part to Nick Mason's crazy drumming. 'Burning Bridges' is a slower song that is mostly uninteresting except from a nice guitar solo from Gilmour.

'Wot's? Uh the Deal' is an acoustically based song with a rather uplifting mood. Most of it is just verse-chorus, so the tasteful solos from Wright and Gilmour truly make this a nice song.

'Mudmen' has an interesting atmosphere dominated by keyboards. Gilmour offers perhaps the most intense and dramatic solo of the album despite severely limiting the notes he plays.

Childhood's End has a slow start with some keyboard work, but never really offers anything exciting, except for the solo, again.

Free Four is the other heavier song of the album and reminds me slightly of 'Spirit in the Sky.' It's not really prog, but out of that context it's a decent rocker.

Stay is the highlight of the album, built around Wright's piano chords with touches of Gilmour's wah-wah guitar tone. The atmosphere is beautiful and invokes a slightly melancholic and nostalgic mood.

The album ends with 'Absolutely Curtains,' which has a nice atmosphere with keyboards, but really isn't that interesting.

Overall, this is kind of a road bump in an otherwise amazing series of albums. But again, it's transitional and also a film score, so I can't discredit them that harshly.

5/10