THE PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN

Ultimately their debut was a watered down Pink Floyd music. When you compare it with what they were playing live at the time this is much more "popish" version of their tracks, and if you check in their setlists only an handful of these were ever played live.

Even though I admit Syd Barrett was obviously the musical leader of the band, I'm not particularly a fan of him. The music isn't that bad, but this record is awfully dated and very attached to the time of it's recording, influences from other psychedelic bands is very noticeable.

Now going song by song:

Astronomy Domine - It's a good enough jam, when played live it usually went to be much longer, but it does it job at sounding quite spacey with decent enough lyrics. Easily one of the best songs from the Barrett era. [Good]

Serious Sam - A bit edgy and catchy and overall well achieved, and a good song as far as psychedelia goes. [Good]

Matilda Mother - Slightly childish, but overall it works as far as presenting a fantasy story, in a way, it does this better than much more elaborated future works by other bands. [Good]

Flaming - The guitar works rather well, but the story doesn't work that well. It's a bit simplistic in that department, but overall it's acceptable. Some of the sound effects are just annoying but on the piano and keyboard department it shines really well. [Good]

Pow R. Toc. H - At the time this might have been weird, because indeed it is a bit weird, but it does sound good, it uses atypical sounds, even though I like more the live version without lyrics. [Good]

Take Up thy Stethoscope and Walk - The first one that isn't that impressive, it has a few good ideas but overall it doesn't work that well. The organ does try to level things up and save it, but it's too erratic. [Neutral]

Interstellar Override - Possibly the best track of this album it's hypnotic and rather well played, the instruments fit together well and create an average enough space tune, but as far as space feel it doesn't work as well as Astronomy Domine. [Good]

Gnome - The first track that isn't much worth paying attention. It's rather simplistic, and the story is silly. This is the type of stuff that could only fly in Syd lead era. [Bad]

Chapter 24 - Better than the one before, at least we see a bit of interesting participation by the bass. The lyrical department ends up being quite uninteresting, I blame more the way it was executed rather than the words themselves. [Bad]

Scarecrow - It doesn't start bad, but the sounds are like a thousand miles apart from what it should sound. And again it's rather simplistic in a bad way. Only gets interesting almost at the end, but the sound you get there should be the beginning of the track and using it as the melody.[Bad]

Bike - The end is rather erratic and too long, but the song works, it's simple but drives its message home. My main complaint is that if there's a song that suffers from the bad mixing from this album is this one, it just doesn't sound that well. [Good]

Now as far as the progressive aspects: Music/Musicianship - They play well enough, I think that in particular it lacks keyboards, because it could have made some of the songs much more tolerable. [Neutral]

Lyrics/Vocals - Even though it might look I'm harping on Syd, I'm not, I think he's a competent musician and a good vocalist, and as far as this he does a pretty darn good job. But the lyrical content I find it lacking, it includes loads of fantasy, that's good but it's not well executed, being mostly with an heavly popish version of what they could have done. [Neutral]

Concept/Structure - Even though the songs have very little in common with each other, they somehow work as an album. Even though they would do much better in the future. [Neutral]

Effects/Arrangements - They tried at least, and did some that were really good specially in the best songs Astronomy Domine and Interstellar Override, but in other occasions instead of these they should have played the instruments. [Neutral]

Cover/Packaging - The cover is rather unimpressive, it's just a modified photo of the members of the band, and the CD I have only brings the set of lyrics, which is fine, but there could be more. Anyway at least it looks psychedelic. [Neutral]