Syd Barrett (nee Roger Keith) may well be jangle pop’s antihero. The ramshackle recording of this, his debut record, of barely scraped together takes from a number of sessions is lo-fi in the extreme. His influence as the originator of Pink Floyd and prime composer of their mind-blowing debut The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn is without doubt. However, despite his personal struggles and disappearance from the music scene and public life from the mid-70s until his death in 2006, his influence as a solo musician, largely from this album alone, must not be forgotten. This is a spaced-out oddity, chaotic yet charming, and with a remarkably high hit-rate in terms of sometimes jaunty, sometimes haunting strummable tunes. Accompanied mainly by his own acoustic or electric guitar, Barrett is joined on some tracks by David Gilmour (playing bass, guitar and drums) and Robert Wyatt (playing drums) whilst production duties were shared across several sessions. The album does still sound like a demo however, but I love the wide-pupiled innocence in songs like Dark Globe and No Good Trying, the genuine seam of loveliness in Golden Hair and Long Gone. The English whimsy that Barrett played about with so well on Pink Floyd tracks such as Arnold Layne and Bike are prevalent here too, particularly in Love You and Here I Go. The closest to Floydian-era psychedelia is perhaps Octopus, which was his only single release as a solo artist and sounds a bit like The Kinks with a bad hangover. FOR FULL REVIEW & PLAYLIST CLICK LINK IN BIO #sydbarrett #themadcaplaughs #pinkfloyd #darkglobe #psychedelicrock #folkrock #englishmusic #psychedelia #nowplaying #nowlistening #recordcollection #randomrecordreview https://www.instagram.com/p/CLSWV8IsoJH/?igshid=y9ddp1wt04ku
