The Obscure Obscured By Clouds
Obscured By Clouds' fiftieth anniversary, and its strange spot within the Pink Floyd canon.
Pink Floyd is an enigma in the history of popular music. The Dark Side of the Moon is the sixth-best selling record of all time, and has been sold over 45 million times, and The Wall is the most successful double album of all time, with over 30 million sales. Indeed, songs like “Money” and “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2” are bona fide crossover classics that were huge hits at the time and remain staples of Rock radio today. Simultaneously, because of Pink Floyd’s persistent experimentalism and ambition on albums like Atom Heart Mother and Animals, they’re a defining act of progressive rock despite their massive popular success. By contrast, when Genesis and Yes broke through to pop superstardom in the 80s, fans of those bands’ 70s output were largely aghast. Pink Floyd’s ability to balance commercial success without selling out by maintaining their authentic art rock appeal is perhaps unmatched, making them one of the most beloved musical acts ever.
1972’s Obscured By Clouds finds itself at a strange place within Pink Floyd’s own history, as it was released in between Meddle and The Dark Side of the Moon, placing Obscured by Clouds at the crossroads between Pink Floyd’s most progressive music and their greatest commercial success. All of Pink Floyd’s pre-Meddle albums were good, but inconsistent in quality, with great songs surrounded by utter disasters. Only from Meddle onwards – specifically with the 23 minute epic “Echoes” – Pink Floyd found their footing and started releasing consistently strong albums. Two years later on The Dark Side of the Moon, they became one of the biggest bands on earth. In the popular history of Pink Floyd, Obscured by Clouds is barely a footnote. It sold decently, but compared to other Pink Floyd albums, it’s among their least successful (even Ummagumma has sold better) and its critical reception is generally mixed, though Far Out’s Jordan Potter released a piece commemorating the album’s fiftieth anniversary where he boldly declared the album Pink Floyd’s most underrated. Only the Pink Floyd devout recall anything of the album, yet it was released as the band found its footing both commercially and artistically, so why is Obscured by Clouds so obscure?
For a start, Obscured by Clouds was recorded as the soundtrack to Barbet Schroeder’s film La Vallée. Of course, Pink Floyd had already produced a soundtrack album for Schroeder, for his 1969 film More, and Pink Floyd’s soundtrack of the same name is among Pink Floyd’s least popular albums. More isn’t amazing; the crushingly heavy “The Nile Song” and “Ibiza Bar” and the beautiful folk songs “Green is the Colour” and “Cymbaline” are great, but everything else drags. Still, it’s hard to talk about More or Obscured by Clouds with much authority, because ultimately, they’re not standalone albums; they’re meant to be experienced as part of the films they were made for, and I haven’t seen either More or La Vallée. One day I will watch those movies, and perhaps hearing the scores alongside the movie will recontexualize the albums, but that will be in the future.
Sonically, Obscured by Clouds’ psychedelia is caught in between the experimental Acid Rock of before and the more subtle spacey textures from The Dark Side of the Moon onwards. Wispy Folk songs like “Burning Bridges,” “Wot’s… Uh the Deal,” and “Free Four” easily would have fit alongside Meddle’s “A Pillow of Winds” and “San Tropez.” “Free Four” is a particularly interesting tune due to cheery country music juxtaposed with dark lyrics dealing with war and death, themes that would become characteristic of Roger Waters’ lyrics later on. Uncharacteristically are the pop songs on here; “The Gold It’s in the…” could have been recorded by David Bowie, and “Stay” is a surprisingly sexual piano ballad sung by Rick Wright. Some of the songs are also surprisingly heavy; the instrumentals “When You’re In” and “Mudmen,” and the album’s best cut, the David Gilmour-penned “Childhood’s End,” are the band’s take on the musical trend of heavy blues rock that bands like Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple had brought to the fore of popular music in the early 70s, but these songs do not feel like facsimiles of those bands.
“Childhood's End” is not just my favourite song on Obscured by Clouds, it’s also one of my favourite Pink Floyd songs period. It’s hard to describe (but that won’t stop me) but there’s a certain sense of intoxicating confidence to the song I find irresistible. The transition from the ambient passage at the start into Bluesy Rock that itself terminates at the exact right point when David Gilmour so assuredly proclaims “But everything one day will cease/All the iron turn to rust/All the proud men turn to dust/So all things time will mend/And so this song will end.,” all while he tastefully and emotively solos underneath. Gilmour has long been my favourite guitarist and one of Rock’s most deeply underappreciated vocalists, but his songwriting has been at times inconsistent. As expected, Gilmour (as well as Roger Waters, Rick Wright, and Nick Mason in particular) perform exceptionally, but his songwriting is on point here as well. This may very well be projection, but I always imagine David Gilmour singing this song with a sly, serene, sanguine smile on his face. At least, that’s the imagery the song conveys to me.
The opening title track and the closer “Absolutely Curtains” are also quaint ambient songs that feels like practice for the band going on to create hypnotizing sandscapes. Overall, Obscured by Clouds is probably the band’s most eclectic album. All of it is psychedelic and prog-y, but there are traces of folk, pop, country, blues and hard rock, jazz, early electronica, krautrock, and a bit of Papuan music at the end. It’s also a very collaborative album; only two songs have a single songwriter (“Childhood’s End” and “Free Four”) and another two songs are credited to all four band members (“When You’re In” and “Absolutely Curtains.”) This relative collaboration on songwriting would only endure until Wish You Were Here, and afterwards the songwriting fell under the domination of Roger Waters, and to a lesser extent, David Gilmour.
Though I maintain my capacity to judge Obscured by Clouds is limited without seeing La Vallée, as music, Obscured by Clouds is much better than More. Perhaps a function of it being a film score, but many of the songs on More are poorly developed and go nowhere, whereas the songwriting on Obscured by Clouds is far better; the songs on Obscured by Clouds feel like songs, not song fragments. Controversially, I will go as far as saying that it is one of Pink Floyd’s best pre-The Dark Side of the Moon albums. It’s no Meddle, or even A Saucerful of Secrets, but it’s a more consistently enjoyable listen than The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, More, Ummagumma, and Atom Heart Mother. Those four albums have more songs to love, but also much more to hate as well. Obscured by Clouds is different because in sum, it’s a quaint, likeable collection of songs even if only “Childhood’s End” is truly monumental. It’s probably the least experimental Pink Floyd album, at least before the 1980s, but it doesn’t have to be experimental. Not bogged down by the confines of trying to be grandiose or conceptual, Obscured by Clouds is Pink Floyd just creating songs because they were having fun together, and it shows in just how eclectic it is. I don’t expect Obscured by Clouds to be anyone’s favourite Pink Floyd album, but it has a unique and undeservedly obscure place within the Pink Floyd canon. Jordan Porter is right, it’s due time that Obscured by Clouds gets the recognition it deserves.