THE PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN

The decline of Syd Barrett after the release of this confident and diverse debut is, without a doubt, a musical tragedy. Yes, maybe we wouldn't have had The Dark Side of the Moon or Wish You Were Here if Syd had remained at the lead of the band, but just imagine what we could have had in their place!

The songs on this album fall into two distinct types; the first side of the album and some of the second side consists of trippy, psychedelic affairs that can, without warning, serve as springboards for the band to take off on an improvisational tangent to God only knows where; "Interstellar Overdrive" and "Astronomy Domine" are doubtless the best examples of these compositions. After "Interstellar Overdrive" dies down the rest of the album is devoted to the other side of Syd's compositions; good-natured, blissed-out fairy tales and nursery rhymes along the lines of "The Scarecrow" or "Bike". Whilst they do point to the fractured, repetitive efforts of Syd's abortive solo career, they manage to be far more coherent than those; if they are a retread from adulthood into the storybook worlds of youth, Syd is at least fully aware of it (just look at "Matilda Mother" if you want confirmation of that), and is willing to take us along with him. There is a sense of knowingness and experience about "Bike" (for example) that you tend not to get with nursery rhymes meant for children; Syd is taking us back to the state of mind we had as children but still talks to us as adults and peers as he does so. It reminds me, in fact, of the first few T.Rex albums, from before Bolan and Took dropped the "yrannosaurus" from the band name, and you can imagine Syd eventually making a solo career out of making similar albums to those. Alas, it wasn't to be.