Pink Floyd
A Saucerful of Secrets
1968
Revisit is a serial of reviews highlighting past releases that now deserve a moment look.
There's some hefty drama underlying Pink Floyd's legacy, with one reference in particular being their volatile leadership history.
Original lead man Syd Barrett was eked out of the circle after his LSD-induced detachment from reality compromised his power to do live and enter in productive rehearsals. During Barrett's crash-and-burn, the band's longtime friend David Gilmour stepped in as a fifth member. After Barrett's departure, the band continued once more as a quartet led by bassist Roger Waters, who, after days of strict creative dominance, departed the incredibly strained relationship. And thus, the Gilmour era over the last decade of the band's existence. With an oeuvre spanning almost 30 years, three leaders and three aesthetic incarnations, Pink Floyd, in their extensive discography, recorded just one studio album that included all 5 members.
The rarity it is, A Saucerful of Secrets acts as the melodic bridge between Barrett's psychedelic pop tunes and Waters' lengthy prog compositions. The charms and instrumental manipulations of the band's debut, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, linger as a pleasant aftertaste. Take the album's bizarro track, "Corporal Clegg." The satiric World War II ode reeks of Barrett's finagling and would be easily confused as a b-side of Piper. Maybe it's the way the guitars siren over crunchy blues chords, or the kazoo-driven chorus, or the result of Gilmour's, Richard Wright's and Nick Mason's vocal tag-teaming sounding uncannily similar to Barrett's during certain moments. Truth is, "Corporal Clegg" is a Waters production; Saucerful, more than anything, demonstrates his blooming as Floyd's chief songwriter.
Opening track "Let There Be More Light" introduces Waters' capabilities to the world. The song begins with an anxious bassline and a whirl of organs and cymbals before the groove slows down and things wash into ominous psychedelia. The end of the song actually splits down the middle, Gilmour soloing in one speaker while, in the other, Wright leads an organ freak-out completely detached from the original arrangement. Waters had big shoes to fill, but he matches Barrett's innovative aptitude throughout the album and sets new standards for pop music's potential.
Saucerful's two centerpieces, "Set the Controls for the Essence of the Sun" - the only Floyd song featuring all 5 members - and "Saucerful of Secrets," the beginning of many band-wide collaborations with Gilmour, delineate psychedelia with brand-new motifs: gloomy, eerie, droning, exotic. Barrett had already broken ground for a genre of drug-enhancing music, but his approach was indebted to traditional sunshine pop, R&B and fairytale narrative. With Saucerful, Waters pioneered profound, serious music to (ahem) "meditate" to. Wright's organ parts on the aforementioned tracks sound more probable for a horror film than a rock album, and Mason, who had initially experimented with unorthodox drumbeats on Barrett's epics "Astronomy Domine" and "Interstellar Overdrive," makes his caveman-like tom-wailing the norm. Still, side-by-side with these expansive mind-trips, Barrett's indelible influence remains - the reverb-bathed mouth sounds, the tape manipulations, the good effects, the odd guitar noises. It's only allow that the album finishes with his last part to Pink Floyd, "Jugband Blues," a playful number that addresses not merely his crumbling relationship with the band ("It's awfully considerate of you to conceive of me hither/ And I'm most obliged to you for devising it cleared/ That I'm not here") but besides his self-awareness of his deteriorating mental state ("And I'm wondering who could be writing this song"). Barrett's Midas touch remains when under his direction; a Salvation Army band accompanies a traditional Floyd freak-out during the song's core. Even in its absurdity, "Jugband Blues" is a touching pop song and one of Barrett's finest moments.
The album didn't create limelight for just Waters' entrance and Barrett's departure. Keyboardist Wright's contribution to the album is stunningly weighty, given his backseat role in the ensuing years. His sentimental pieces "Remember a Day" and "See-Saw" help break up Waters' dense, physics-unraveling mysticism. Strangely enough, Wright assumes lead vocals on 4 of the six non-instrumental tracks. His jovial, boyish voice - not Waters' - commands the case of Saucerful by the end. Though a shame both his songwriting and voice rarely graced future albums, it makes the album all the more special.
Saucerful could've been Barrett's sophomore album; likewise, we were favorable the album wasn't completely Barrett-less. But what Floyd ultimately had was a fractured testament to a rapidly evolving band. Ironically Saucerful's music, in the thick of Floyd's legacy, was unique unto itself. Barrett's Piper - and this is not defamation - was an elementary, childish and fantastical conception. By the early '70s, Floyd had already matured beyond nomadic improvisation and had inadvertently crossed the oceans of psychedelia and onto the shores of sheer progressive rock. Saucerful's murky, hazy essence was just ground on one other album, the "previously-unreleased" compilation Relics. The band hadn't found itself yet, the grounds it's such a gem. Saucerful frolicked like an adolescent living the best years of their lifetime without a concern in the world.
by Jory Spadea
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