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Rating: A lonely man..
I've always had a fondness for crazy minstrels, those who experiment and live on the edge between wakefulness and sleep, those who travel..
This is not just an album, this is a stream of consciousness, it's a soliloquy, and mind you, a soliloquy and not a monologue, because Syd didn't care a bit if others “got” his message, he sought a meaning for himself, he sought it amongst the stars of the early space travels with his Floyd, he sought it among the acid strings of his guitar and regurgitated it several times before singing it, he blew it out, releasing it slowly, as if he didn't want to communicate it, with a detachment and a romantic, icy, disarming coldness..
Barrett, in not wanting to be understood, ended up being understood, because every nobility of taste and spirit, every form of art, the moment it is expressed, also chooses its listeners, finding participation, drawing its boundaries towards others..
All stylistic devices thus at once keep things distant, create distance, interdict “access,” while they open, throw open the ears of those who are attuned to that discourse.
It becomes almost superfluous to describe the individual pieces of this exquisite, delicate journey into the psyche of a man who sees madness as the most sincere, most true node to trace a line of knowledge. Our Syd, in fact, believed that the brain, like the sensory organs, acted as “mediations” towards the surrounding reality. This belief, while on one hand it led him to an awareness of a total relativism due to the lack of any form of transcendental truth, on the other hand led him to disarrange his cerebral organ, gradually making it “blow up,” with the lysergic trips, with LSD, and more..
This choice of the branch of unconsciousness allowed him to write overwhelming, harsh melodies, from the intro of “Baby Lemonade” that opens the psychoanalysis session, a sinister and cruel sound as if to foretell a non-return from this non-reality, even though the fright seems to vanish immediately, because Syd thrives in this mayhem of sounds, colors, lights and shadows like a goldfish in a glass bowl, he feels perfectly at ease... and with the following tracks, from the tender “Love Song” to “Maisie,” “Gigolo Aunt,” “Waving my Arms in the Air,” it's like witnessing one of those Escher paintings, composed of infinite staircases with no exit, or reading Rimbaud’s poem “Les Voyelles,” thus sealing an ecstatic coming and going, Syd is falling into a well but seems to find enjoyment, since he does nothing to avoid falling ever further down....
These are songs of lascivious and suffering singing, but also arrogant, characterized by a growing, restrained tension that never explodes, just as the melodies, always held back and never straightforward, and just when they're about to be revealed, they are distorted, made ugly and shrouded in nonsense, like jokes of nature, like Zappa's “free-form freak outs.” Yet the author, as mentioned, doesn't want to provide in the text the key that would allow us to dissipate each “darkness” of his soul, and to do so he utilizes a polysemy and an ambiguous perspective that is evident from the lyrics, and he does so simply because he too is living in a state of uncertainty, he too is searching for a meaning, and so he eliminates univocity, representing sensations with a fluid indefiniteness, as happens in dreams, using dreamlike language to express what's dictated by his unconscious.
Judgment day comes, if we want, with “Dominoes,” which I consider, together with the insistent and schizophrenic “Rats,” the true masterpiece of the album; here the words really struggle to come out, they are just barely whispered, as if carefully plucked out with tweezers without causing pain, evoking only the irreversible annoyance of an unresolved chronic pinch, and thus, once and for all, without embellishments or unnecessary jabber, from the tight symbolism and semantic depth emerges a single, unequivocal...
“You and I, you and I and dominoes, time goes by...”
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Baby Lemonade ()
In the sad town
Cold iron hands clap
The party of clowns outside
Rain falls in gray far away
Please, please, baby lemonade
In the evening sun going down
When the earth streams in, in the morning
Send a cage through the post
Make your name like a ghost
Please, please, baby lemonade
I'm screaming, I met you this way
You're nice to me like ice
In the clock they sent through a washing machine
Come around, make it soon, so alone
Please, please, baby lemonade
In the sad town
Cold iron hands clap
The party of clowns outside
Rain falls in gray far away
Please, please, baby lemonade
In the evening sun going down
When the earth streams in, in the morning
Send a cage through the post
Make your name like a ghost
Please, please, baby lemonade
02 Love Song ()
I knew a girl and I like her still
She said she knew she would trust me and I, her will
I said, "OK baby, tell me what you'll be
And I'll lay my head down and see what I see"
By the time she was back by her open eyes
I knew that I was in for a big surprise
I knew a girl and I like her still
She said she knew she would trust me and I, her will
I said, "OK baby, tell me what you'll be
And I'll lay my head down and see what I see"
By the time she was back by her open eyes
I knew that I was in for a big surprise
03 Dominoes ()
It's an idea, someday
In my tears, my dreams
Don't you want to see her proof?
Life that comes of no harm
You and I, you and I and dominoes, the day goes by...
You and I in place
Wasting time on dominoes
A day so dark, so warm
Life that comes of no harm
You and I and dominoes, time goes by...
Fireworks and heat, someday
Hold a shell, a stick or play
Overheard a lark today
Losing when my mind's astray
Don't you want to know with your pretty hair
Stretch out your hand, glad feel
In an echo for your way
It's an idea, someday
In my tears, my dreams
Don't you want to see her proof?
Life that comes of no harm
You and I and dominoes, the day goes by
And by, and by...
04 It Is Obvious ()
It is obvious
may I say, oh baby, that it is found on another plane?
Yes I can creep into cupboards, sleep in the hall
your stars - my stars, a simple cock bar
only an impulse - pie in the sky
mumble listen dolly
drift over your mind - holly
creep into bed when your head's on the ground
she held the torch on the porch,
she winked an eye
Reason it is written on the brambles
stranded on the spikes - my blood red, oh listen:
remember those times I could call
through the clear day
time - be there...
braver and braver, a handkerchief waver
the louder you lips to a loud hailer
growing together, they ('re) growing each either
no wondering, stumbling, fumbling
rumbling minds shot together,
our minds shot together...
So equally over a valley, a hill
wood on quarry stood, each of us crying
a velvet curtain of gray
mark the blanket where the sparrows play
and the trees by the waving corn stranded
my legs move the last empty inches to you
the softness, the warmth from the weather in suspense
mote to a grog - the star a white chalk
minds shot together, our minds shot together...
05 Rats ()
Got it hit down
spot knock inside a spider
says: "That's love yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!"
"That's love yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!"
says: "That's love - All know it
TV, teeth, feet, peace, feel it...
"That's love yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!"
"That's love yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!"
like the fall that brings me to
I like the fall that brings me to
I like the cord around sinew
I make a cord around sinew
Duck, the way to least is less
Tea craving of the metal west
'ell tomorrow's rain and test
'ell tomorrow's rain and test
Love an empty son and guess
Love an empty son and guess
pimples dangerous and blessed
Heaving, arriving, tinkling
mingling jets and statuettes
seething wet we meeting fleck
seething wet we meeting fleck
lines and winds and crib and half
each fair day I give you half
of each fair day I give you half
I look into your eyes and you,
flathe in the sun for you...
Bam, spastic, tactile engine
heaving, crackle, slinky, dormy, roofy, wham
I'll have them, fried bloke
broken jardy, cardy, smoocho, moocho, paki, pufftle
sploshette moxy, very smelly,
cable, gable, splintra, channel
top the seam he's taken off
rats, rats lay down flat
we don't need you, we act like that
and if you think you're un-loved
then we know about that...
rats, rats, lay down flat!
yes, yes, yes, yes, lay down flat!
06 Maisie ()
Maisie, Maisie, Maisie, Maisie...
bad luck, bride of a bull
strode out to meet Maisie in the evening light
Maisie, his illuminous grin put her in a spin
Maisie, lay in the hall
with diamonds and emeralds
Maisie, Maisie...
bad luck - the bride of a bull
Maisie lay in the wall with her emeralds
and diamond brooch, beyond reproach
bad luck - bride of a bull
strode out to meet Maisie in the evening light...
Maisie!
07 Gigolo Aunt ()
Grooving around in a trench coat
with the satin entrail
Seems to be all around in tin and lead pail, we pale
Jiving on down to the beach
to see the blue and the gray
seems to be all and it's rosy-it's a beautiful day!
Will you please keep on the track
'cause I almost want you back
'cause I know what you are
you are a gigolo aunt, you're a gigolo aunt!
Yes I know what you are
you are a gigolo aunt, you're a gigolo aunt!
Heading down with the light, the dust in your way
she was angrier than, than her watershell male
life to this love to me - heading me down to me
thunderbird shale
seems to be all and it's rosy - it's a beautiful day!
will you please keep on the track
'cause I almost want you back
'cause I know what you are
you are a gigolo aunt
Grooving on down in a knapsack superlative day
some wish she move and just as she can move jiving away
she made the scene should have been-superlative day
everything's all and it's rosy, it's a beautiful day
will you please keep on the track
'cause I almost want you back
'cause I know what you are
you are a gigolo aunt...
09 Wined and Dined ()
Wined and dined
Oh it seemed just like a dream
Girl was so kind
Kind of love I'd never seen
Only last summer, it's not so long ago
Just last summer, now musk winds blow
Wined and dined
Oh it seemed just like a dream
Girl was so kind
Kind of love I'd never seen
Only last summer, it's not so long ago
Just last summer, now musk winds blow
Wined and dined
Oh it seemed just like a dream
Girl was so kind
Kind of love I'd never seen
Chalk underfoot, life I should prove
Dancing in heat, our love and you
Wined and dined
Oh it seemed just like a dream
Girl was so kind
Kind of love I'd never seen
10 Wolfpack ()
Howling the pack in formation appears
Diamonds and clubs, light misted fog, the dead
Waving us back in formation
The pack in formation
Bowling they bat as a group
And the leader is seen so early
The pack on their backs, the fighters
Through misty the waving, the pack in formation
Far reaching waves on sight, shone right
I lay as if in surround
All enmeshing, hovering
The milder I gaze
All the animals laying trail
Beyond the bough winds
Mild the reflecting electricity eyes
Tears, the life that was ours
Grows sharper and stronger away and beyond
Short wheeling, fresh spring
Gripped with blanched bones moaned
Magnesium, proverbs and sobs
Howling the pack in formation appears
Diamonds and clubs, light misted fog, the dead
Waving us back in formation
The pack in formation
11 Effervescing Elephant ()
An Effervescing Elephant
with tiny eyes and great big trunk
Once whispered to the tiny ear
The ear of one inferior
that by next June he'd die, oh yeah!
Because the tiger would roam
The little one said, "Oh my goodness I must stay at home"
And every time I hear a growl
I'll know the tiger's on the prowl
and I'll be really safe, you know
the elephant he told me so
Everyone was nervy, oh yeah!
and the message was spread
to zebra, mongoose, and the dirty hippopotamus
who wallowed in the mud and chewed
his spicy hippo-plankton food
and tended to ignore the word
preferring to survey a herd
a stupid water bison, oh yeah
I'd much prefer something to chew
He ate the elephant
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Other reviews
By charles
"It may not take ten listens to fully understand and appreciate it, but two or three at most could be enough."
"It deserves to be listened to, there are no doubts about this. And trust me, it will surprise you with the simplicity with which it will get inside you."
By Valeriorivoli
I was among the dark craters of a Moon made of memories... the music from that dream... vanished.
A mad drift with no return! Listening on headphones is recommended, perhaps an old Sennheiser. Strictly for fans!
By rabloto
Thank you, Syd, for the funny, humble, and anarchic diachrony of your singing.
I Trust in Syd. And what he sings now is mine. Of anyone who listens to him.
By fuggitivo
Barrett’s listless and tired voice matched perfectly with my physical and mental state, it dragged tiredly from song to song just as I dragged my wakefulness.
An ambiguous sense reigns over everything, which is perfectly rendered in 'It Is Obvious', which sums up the entire album.
By luludia
"'Barrett' is a record wrapped in a kind of sleep, and the songs seem almost to struggle to come out."
"These are slow-motion songs... like flowers forever captured by a fossil."
