OBSCURED BY CLOUDS - REVIEW
We start with the titular track Obscured By Clouds - a heavy-sounding synth and sliding guitar piece with strong post-apocalyptic, somewhat sci-fi overtones. Being strictly instrumental, I suppose this track is meant to set an ambience stage for the rest of the album. Its success at doing so is somewhat marred by the next track in the album...
When You're In is that next track, and it hits hard right out of the gate in a jarring sort of way. If the previous track left you mellowed, then this track will kick you in the butt and get you going again. It keeps a consistent tone with the previous track, tying them together nicely. It is repetitive and simplistic however, and not especially suited for independent listening on its own.
Burning Bridges comes next, leading in with some classic PF organ playing. We go to the twee sound on this one - the hallmark airy singing and hippy lyrics are an omnipresent component of all PF albums, and Obscured By Clouds is no different. It's certainly a slower, more laid back song than the previous two. The soulful guitar work and downwards-inflecting lyrics make this one feel quite sad.
The Gold It's In The... jumps in to kick up the energy again, with hard-rocking electric guitar and pop-y, upbeat singing. The rhythm is much more approachable on this track, like something you might actually hear on the radio. I found myself actually bobbing my head along with this one - it's quite catchy, however brief.
Wot's... Uh The Deal? starts out with almost country-sounding acoustic guitar playing, some piano backing, and more airy singing. It's a drastic decrease in tempo from the prior track - I'm detecting a theme of highs and lows for this album, and I find that it's washing out the whole experience (not very "prog" for "prog rock"). It's a pleasant enough song for what it is though, and I the biggest criticism I could level at it is that it's a very "safe" song; there's nothing new or radical here.
The next track, Mudmen, drops the tempo even lower (if you can believe it), practically dipping into slow-dance territory. It has a lounge feel to it, with the organ and chimes reflecting that quintessential '70s sound almost flawlessly. A deep electric guitar pops in to remind us this is supposed to be rock music, however, and adds some much needed punch to the song. Some echoing riffs and electronic noises paint the track with the sci-fi sound I've come to expect from PF at this point, but in a way that feels neither alien nor out of place. The guitar wailing in the second half of the track really gives this a rock opera vibe.
Childhood's End climbs its way into the album next with a slow-building droning sound that tapers off into acoustic and electric guitar played over organ stings. This is the first track on the album to feel truly like prog rock, like something you'd expect to hear in the Heavy Metal film soundtrack. The lyrics are definitely rock-inspired, having a harder edge to them than the typical twee stuff.
Free Four goes right back into that twee sound though, with a rhythm that almost sounds like a children's song, or something written by Ringo Starr. That all changes once the song hits the guitar solo parts - very hefty things that totally transform the aesthetic of the track. It sounds like it might have been inspired by Creedence Clearwater Revival and their ilk, right down to the guitar stings that are virtually identical to the ones found in CCR songs like Sprit In The Sky.
Stay begins with gentle piano playing and accompanied by sliding guitar. The lyrics are punchy and straightforward, if a little overly simplistic. At this point though, the track feels plodding, like a slow, steady march; this is thankfully broken up with electric guitar solos and heavier piano playing. I suppose that's fitting for the up/down nature of the album as a whole.
Lastly, we end with Absolutely Curtains, and it's organ-heavy, sci-fi style introduction over rolling cymbals. The piano interspersed throughout helps ground the song, but that droning synthesizer noise persists and makes this track feel quasi-futuristic. It meanders a bit and experiments in places, but on the whole feels mostly coherent. There's a child choir singing something incoherent at the end of it, which I believe to be the first instance of the child-choir in PF's work (something I know will return in later albums). Unfortunately, it feels like it overstays its welcome in wrapping up the album, and disappears rather abruptly at the end.
Overall: Obscured By Clouds was apparently another soundtrack album, and I think this shows in the way the album can't seem to stick with a consistent tempo, tone, or theme throughout. It's an album that feels very piecemeal, very "assembled" - as such, it suffers when taken as a whole, even though the individual tracks are not bad by any means. There are no especially long tracks on this album, which tips its hand at the notion that the whole thing is less a single artistic piece as it is a collection of scraps. Somehow this album manages to be both a slog and fleeting; two very contradictory ideas that PF has unwittingly managed to fuse into this patchwork amalgamation of wholly average music.
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