Pink Floyd
Obscured by Clouds

THE REVIEW

It's time to talk about this work by Pink. Let's be honest: "Obscured by Clouds", the soundtrack of Schroeder's film "La Vallée", is perhaps the least known long-playing of the English group, the most bland work of the early Floyd production, a work in the shadows, but not for this to be thrown away, quite the opposite.
It is an important work from an etiological point of view, given that, for those who do not know, only a year later a certain "The Dark Side of the Moon" would be released, and it is impossible to expect there not to be at least a minimal point of contact between the two works. Let's say, however, that, like the previous "More", it is a mostly atypical album, not genuinely Floydian like the others because it was subordinate to cinematic needs, tied to conformist schemes that make it an interesting work because it is suspended between freedom of expression and dogmatism.

Full of pop and soft-rock sounds, through the instrumentals "When You're in" and "Obscured by Clouds" it gives a hint to what, like "Time" and "Money", will be Gilmour's splendid guitar performances, while Wright's keyboard diversions ("Mudmen") will be echoed in "The Great Gig in the Sky", a masterpiece of the next album. But above all, there's a little masterpiece, an unsettling product forced to overshadow all the others due to the strident contrast between musical danceability and lexical harshness, that half-hit that is "Free Four". The most significant track of the album, it references the "Riding the Gravy Train" that would become the flagship of the masterful "Have a Cigar" three years later, the risk of "riding the wave" typical of Pink Floyd, an autobiographical reference where putting yourself at stake can mean failure or apotheosis.
Between the lines, the repeated references to death, and specifically to the figure of Waters' father, who, as an upcoming subject of "The Wall" and "The Final Cut", would already give important clues about Roger's imminent appropriation of the group's ambitions, even before "Dark Side". Important clues, therefore, from an often sacrificed work, a nonetheless musically valid and reassuring work.