Syd Barrett: Barrett [HARVEST]

Why you'll love it

This Harvest reissue comes on 180g vinyl in a gloss-and-matte jacket with the black, yellow and green Harvest labels. The Pink Floyd co-founder's second solo set gathers twelve of his whimsical, stream-of-consciousness songs.

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Pressed in the EU
• Stereo mix

About the album

Syd Barrett was Pink Floyd's first frontman and chief songwriter, the man behind their earliest singles and The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. After leaving the band in 1968 he started a solo career, and his old friends kept turning up to help: David Gilmour produced this second album and played on it, with Richard Wright alongside, and the sessions came together at Abbey Road in 1970.

"Baby Lemonade" opens with a bright, wandering guitar figure, "Gigolo Aunt" is a loose, joyful rocker, and "Dominoes" drifts along in a gorgeous haze. "Rats" and "Maisie" show his wilder side, while "Love Song," "Wined And Dined" and "Effervescing Elephant," a nursery-rhyme romp about the jungle, show how lightly he could wear a melody.

Barrett stepped back from music a few years later and devoted himself to painting and gardening, and Pink Floyd paid tribute to him in "Shine On You Crazy Diamond." Any record with a song called "Effervescing Elephant" deserves a place on the shelf, and we've yet to meet the one that couldn't use it.

Also at Kops: more Syd Barrett on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Harvest (cat# SHSP 4007), a reissue of the 1970 album.