1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 175. Syd Barrett – The Madcap Laughs (1970)

 

Now here’s a strange one to begin the Seventies, as a lot of it musically harks back to the psychedelia era. Which to be fair is only three or four years ago from the time of the album’s release, and by all accounts it had a fairly troubled production process, going in and out of production three times and eventually passing through the hands of his old Pink Floyd comrades, David Gilmour and Roger Waters (who had basically abandoned Syd by just not bothering to pick him up to go to gigs any more).

The tracks all have characteristic Barrett oddness (he was apparently way ahead of the meme curve in one sense. Other musicians: What time signature are we playing in Syd? Syd: Yes.) But despite this, there are some arguable bangers on here, which would probably be better if they were performed with a better singing voice than Barrett who, it has to be said, is a bit thin and slightly tuneless sometimes. This is probably on purpose to an extent.

No Man’s Land is glorious fuzzy psychedelia, No Use Trying also blends in the kind of acid guitar featured by the Byrds on Eight Miles High with a jaunty rhythm. Elsewhere Barrett follows on the kind of vaudeville whimsy of Bike from Piper At The Gates of Dawn. Love You is a kind of trad-jazz themed ragtime number with the typical Barrettesque lyrical onslaught of “Honey love you honey funny sunny morning love you more fun in the skyline baby. Ice cream ‘scuse me I saw you looking good the other evening”, while Here I Go is a great fun ragtime kind of track with surprisingly coherent lyrics. Even the weirdness of Dark Globe, where Barrett goes deliberately offkey, is quite good in an experimental way. Easier to listen to than Trout Mask Replica, it feels like it could have influenced David Bowie for tracks like Aladdin Sane with its slightly out of key piano solo.

Where the album begins to fall apart is in the Gilmour/Waters edited tracks at the end, featuring between-takes whining from Barrett, false starts, and some really weak singing and musicianship. This is possibly a combination of Barrett becoming more and more difficult to work with, but also Gilmour has pondered that they wanted to demonstrate what it was like to have to deal with Barrett, and in some sense wanted to punish him. Which is a shame. These last tracks are more like some of the harder ones on Skip Spence’s Oar, a man in similar mental distress, but the earlier ones are some pretty good tunes.