ATOM HEART MOTHER

"Atom Heart Mother" is one of Pink Floyd's more underrated albums. The 24 minutes long title track is a quite unusual by band standards, bombastic, orchestral track and the only symphonic one they ever did. I think that the orchestral choir arrangements are done well, as well as the performance of each band member, specially Nick Mason delivers one of his best work on drums. Except the choral passages, the whole piece with six parts is holden instrumental. It also has some lengths after about seventeen minutes, where the psychedelic part of the song takes control, that's why the track can't reach the charm and brilliance of the space-masterpiece Echoes, but it's by no means a less than solid epic. After the 24 minutes long piece follows "If", a slow piece by Roger Waters, which is just nice but boring at first listen, but becomes even more meaningful after some more listenings. The lyrics are poorly sad but the uplifting mood of the song makes it at the same time pretty joyful. Unspectacular but rewarding. "Summer '68" is the secret highlight of the album, very good lines and a emotional chorus sung by Rick Wright, actually one of the most overlooked gems in Pink Floyd's catalogue! A song that reminds on the flower-power era, but in a real nice way. "Fat Old Sun" is David Gilmour's song on AHM, after we already have heard Water's and Wright's collaborations on the album. It is a lot more exciting than If in a straight musical aspect, with nice vocals a emotional guitar solo by Dave Gilmour at the end, which also closes the song. "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast" is to me a dull filler, with some cool ideas though, for example you can hear the cooking of some eggs and stuff. The 13 minutes long epic is only weared by a acoustic guitar and a guy who talks at breakfast, during he cooks the eggs.

Well, "Atom Heart Mother" is a strange Pink Floyd album, but it grows from time to time. It couldn't reach the brilliance of milestones like Meddle, Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here or even Animals, but it's a state of art record. The band themselves hate it, but I think it doesn't deserve that bash. AHM was IMO even the best work of the band to date and is something of a transition album of Floyd's psychedelic phase and the later direction took on Meddle towards commercial success on DSOTM and WYWH. It's at the end a great addition to any prog collection, at least for the monumental, if flawed title track.

album rating: 8.5/10 points = 83 % on MPV scale = 4/5 stars

point-system: 0 - 3 points = 1 star / 3.5 - 5.5 points = 2 stars / 6 - 7 points = 3 stars / 7.5 - 8.5 points = 4 stars / 9 - 10 points = 5 stars