Pink Floyd - Atom Heart Mother

The first Pink Floyd album I ever bought was Atom Heart Mother. I have no idea how or when I got it. It certainly wasn’t anything that I got since I had no clue who the band was and since the album doesn’t really contain any radio hits.
What it does have is an awesome cover.
It’s not the best Floyd album to begin with, in retrospect, probably because it’s one of the band’s least enjoyable efforts. The band was still attempting to find their own footing after the dismissal/departure of Syd Barrett and they forged ahead with democratic songwriting and wandering jams.
In fact, the title track takes up an entire side. There are moments of grandiose greatness-particularly with the introductions of a nice brass ensemble-but it just doesn’t possess the qualities that necessitate such a lengthy passage.
On the other side, each band member (except drummer Nick Mason) is given a title of their own.
Roger Waters’ entry is by far the best. “If” begins as a gentle acoustic before morphing into a slow musical exploration that’s similar to the band’s later work on Dark Side Of The Moon.
Richard Wright gives a surprisingly complex “Summer of ‘68” which, again, features a nice brass part and infectious pop melody. Lyrically, Wright is nowhere near the caliber of Waters’ but this is a vast improvement over his work on other Floyd albums.
David Gilmour’s “Fat Old Sun” is a grower, seemingly uneventful on first listen but very memorable after a few rounds.
And then there’s “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast,” a thirteen-minute long instrumental broken down in parts by a dude making breakfast and mumbling. I was pretty intriguing as a kid, but later you realize that the band is just reaching for anything and settled on recording their roadie (Alan) and a bowl of milky Rice Krispies.
Add together that milky cereal with the bovine on the cover and what do you get? Probably the soggiest effort in Pink Floyd’s catalog.