Obscured by Clouds Review

Sandwiched between Meddle and the record that made them enormous, this exists because a director asked and the money was good. The band went to a chateau, worked fast, and produced something with no concept, no suite and no message, which in this catalogue is almost a novelty. Childhood's End is the pick, a Gilmour song that would not have embarrassed the album that followed it, and Wot's... Uh the Deal is a lovely acoustic thing that almost nobody knows.

Free Four is a jaunty pop song about death and a dead father, and the cheerfulness of the arrangement against that lyric is the only really strange decision on the record. The instrumentals are functional and short. Nothing here is bad and nothing here is essential, which is a fair definition of a soundtrack. Worth an hour if you want to hear this band with the ambition switched off and the tunes left on, and worth skipping if you want the thing they are famous for.