Atom Heart Mother

Pink Floyd's fifth album, Atom Heart Mother, appeared a full year after the disappointing studio half of Ummagumma. Originally titled "The Amazing Pudding," the album's side-long title suite was an amalgam of work the Floyd had been kicking around at the time. Of course, 1970 turned out to be the year for adding orchestras to rock music, something to which even the Floyd would succumb. Composer Ron Geesin was called in to score the already-recorded backing track. He and Roger Waters had first collaborated almost two years prior (though the soundtrack, The Body, would see release in November). Yet the piece's wavering tempo and the so-called "professional" musicians' attitudes nearly proved his undoing. "Father's Shout" rises to David Gilmour's cinematic main theme, while "Breast Milky" continues the (more or less) symphonic nature of the track. The choir takes over on "Mother Fore" until Gilmour's bluesy licks open "Funky Dung." From there, the main theme reprises itself between blasts of Mellotron and shouts of choir, before the final section, "Remergence," offers one last big finale. For the most part, the effort fails, as the concept is more interesting than the execution. But what an experiment it was! A clutch of songs from the individual band members fill the second side. "If" proves to be a Waters archetype, while Rick Wright's Beach Boy-esque "Summer ‘68" remains one of his finest offerings. The last track, the group composition "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast," is somewhat of a sleeper; though full of gauzy melodies, psychedelic it certainly is not. In fact, it's probably the most un-Floyd-like song the band would write. The album cover offered no name or title: only the picture of a cow, the magnificent Lullubelle III. Despite the lack of critical zeal for the record, it turned out to be Pink Floyd's first No. 1 album in the UK. Although EMI would release an essential compilation of singles, Relics, the following May, little would be heard from the Floyd over the next year.