• AllMyVinyl #98
• Band: Pink Floyd
• Album Title: Obscured by Clouds
• Release Date: 2 Jun 1972
• Date purchased: 25 Dec 2024
• Location purchased: Amazon
• Color of vinyl: black
• Number of discs: 1
• Links: [ Wikipedia | Discogs | Band Website | Complete album on Youtube ]

I’m going out of order again today and going with this Pink Floyd album as I was given it as a Christmas gift yesterday on Christmas Day 2024.

This is an album I never owned in the past on vinyl. I think a large part of that had to do with the fact that it was created to be a soundtrack to a movie.  As such, my earlier self saw this as an “inferior” album – much like their “More” album.  My thinking was “Well, this wasn’t a real album, it’s a bunch of ambient crap I don’t care about”.  That stance is obviously WRONG, but that’s what I thought in the past, and the primary reason I never bought it intentionally until now.  Technically I did have a copy – Back in 2011 when I bought the Floyd box set Discovery, it came with a copy of all the proper Floyd studio albums, so I had it on CD, but I don’t recall listening to it much if at all.   There were two songs I knew from this album from elsewhere (which I’ll get into in the songs part), so I never felt the need to explore this one.

Then things changed when I started seeing the Floyd cover band “The Australian Pink Floyd” show.  They covered some stuff from here and I really liked it – specially their cover of the title track.  I’m not sure what I was thinking, as that’s a smilingly great track.  So I broke out that CD and really enjoyed it in recent years.  Discovered it way too late, but hey, I got there in the end.

Then as I mentioned, I got the album on vinyl for the first time on Christmas Day 2024, and of course had to break it out as the next album on the list.

Obscured by Clouds – Instrumental.  It has some power to it that isn’t too far out of line from the opening track to the Meddle album, “One of the These Days”.  This was my onramp to enjoying this album as I mentioned earlier with Aussie Floyd.

When You’re In – Instrumental.  This pretty much goes with the first song.  Between the two of them, they’re 5:21 combined with this one being the shorter track.  They’re technically two tracks, but it really feels like one.  Either way I like both of them.

Burning Bridges – A rarity, a co-write between Roger Waters & Rick Wright.  Given they were both founding members, you’d think this would come up more, but it didn’t.  Has vocals (by Gilmour & Wright).  This too also reminds me of Meddle – specifically the slower song in the middle of the album (A Pillow of Winds).  Most of this is an organ melody, which speaks to Wright having written it, obviously.  Fits in with Meddle more than Dark Side (the next album).  I got to see Nick Mason do this live with his Saucerful of Secrets band in 2022.

The Gold It’s in the..  This is a lost track.  It’s a harder edge song for Floyd.  It’s straight up rock & roll.  It’s not as balls out as say something like “The Nile Song”, and actually has a bit of a Beatles vibe to it.  Sung by Gilmour.  It’s VERY MUCH a lost song in the catalog – something that I would wager most people don’t know.  If you’re into harder rock, check this song out.  I was surprised how much I liked this.

Wot’s… Uh the Deal? – This one isn’t one of my favorites.  I knew the song from elsewhere as Gilmour performed it live in the 2000’s a bit, but it’s just kind of there.  I don’t dislike it, but its doesn’t get me going.  Having said that, I do like Rick’s piano work in the middle part of the song when there’s no vocals going on.

Mudmen – Another instrumental.  Not much to say here, it’s obviously an instrumental piece designed to go with something going on the movie.  As a piece of music, it’s “ok”, but I would have preferred a full song here.

Childhood’s End – Side 2 starts off with this song fully written by David Gilmour – he sings it as well.  It has a cool vibe – you start off thinking it’s going to be something slower, and it kicks in to a great solid beat that runs through the rest of the song.  Quite like this, but don’t have a ton of words for it.

Free Four – This is the song I knew most before getting this album.  That’s because it also appears on the 1983 compilation album “Works“.  That album also had the song “Embryo” – both of which I had never heard before, so the Works compilation was a big deal to me.  I loved Free Four from the start and always wondered why it wasn’t on an album.  hahaha.  :)  Anyway – it’s a great solid rock track – the kind Floyd wasn’t terribly known for.  Good strong rock beat, great vocals, good guitar work.  Not that Floyd wasn’t capable of that, but it wasn’t what they normally wrote.  MUCH later on, Roger used the lyrics from Free Four to open his “Dark Side of the Moon Redux” album in 2023.  The original is one of my favorite Gilmour guitar tracks.

Stay – This brings the pace down – it’s a slower track with lead vocals by Rick Wright – the second song credited to the duo on this album.  The background sound has a keyboard “funk” sound to it that wouldn’t be out of place in the music for something like “Sanford & Son”. haha.  A nice slower paced song, perfectly placed after the faster song that Free Four was.  If you like the songs that Rick sings in Floyd, you’ll like this.  The “solo” portion of the song has a weird thing that I can’t tell if it’s Gilmour’s guitar through something else, or it’s Rick on the keys.  Distinctive sound, though.

Absolutely Curtains – The album closes with another instrumental – this one credited to all four Floyd members.  Very much a piece of music for the movie – it’s got a stronger “in a movie” sound than any of the other songs on this.

Overall, this is an enjoyable album, but it won’t be high up on on many people’s lists of “favorite Floyd albums”.  there’s a lot to like here (Free Four, the title track, The Gold It’s In the…”  Definitely some good music here – it is Waters / Gilmour / Mason / Wright after all.  I mean the same four blokes were in the process of recording Dark Side of the Moon when they stopped to do this thing for the movie.   Glad I have it, and if you’re looking to expand your Floyd reach beyond things like Dark Side, The Wall, or Wish You Were Here, take a look at Obscured by Clouds.  There’s some great songs on here waiting to be discovered (again, maybe?)