Syd Barrett
Barrett

THE REVIEW

Syd Barrett-Barrett (1970)

This morning I walked in a dream: I was among the dark craters of a Moon made of memories, I was in the beautiful communal garden of my old house, spinning around doing tricks on my yellow banana skateboard; I was very young, but old and wise inside and I didn't know how to explain it...to my girlfriend at the time. Against the backdrop of a strange, unreal astral sun, there was a distant cacophonic soundtrack, generated by who knows which god of dreams, full of melancholic slides and hallucinatory childish chants: something like Syd Barrett, in short!  Then I woke up. And the strange sensation of a mystery just touched and flown away remained. The music from that dream... I had lost it as if inside a shell: vanished. A handful of flies in hand, like a few opalescent and  monochord songs, like Syd's latest album.

Even more intimate and whimsical than the first solo album, the gospel of Baby Lemonade: In the evening, sun going down, when the earth streams in the morning: in the circadian nonsense and among clocks inside washing machines- there's a distant resonance with the astronomical cabals and radio in the brain of Astronomy Domine from the first album, but here remains only a sparse sad and pervasive beauty, which acts as a prologue to the sad and nostalgic mood of the rest of the songs.
The cynical declaration of Shakespearean intent of Love Song, the hypnotic blues Waving My Arms in the Air in medley with I Never Lied To You-where there's still a reference to his psychedelic guru demeanor during Astronomy performances, mixed with visions of women, hair, and a telephone finale that foreshadows the back-and-forth of Rino Gaetano's Nuntereggaeppiu; the surreal and poignant funeral march of Dominoes, where playing and wasting time is the existential condition of the couple,  the summer whispers of warm slides in the intimate Wined and Dined, the nursery rhyme and the telepathies of It's Obvious-our minds shot together!! : all the songs, which mostly talk about women, have the constant of an ethereal detachment and a gradual withdrawal from the world typical of someone who's gone under an irresistible depression and on a roll with drugs to obliviate slippery but hardly bearable weights, as testified by the bodiddleyan jolts of Rats-the negative of Lucifer Sam- and the walkie-talking-blues of Maisie-bride of an ox! - and I've met quite a few brides of oxen in their lands! The closure is entrusted to one of his first songs, Effervescing Elephant, making one last conversion to an U towards childhood, right after having deluded us with who knows what mysterious flocks of aliens and alienated in waved formation on Wolfpack! By the way, you can send "Wolfpack" Ringtone to your Cell. Is it possible? Who knows-- 

Between adolescent obsessions, late psychedelic folk oddities, and Richard Wright's subdued liturgies,  Syd Barrett's last official and "radio" songs end here, like fluttering insects from one hemisphere to another of the brain: but without pretensions, without particular messages except for a list of dreams and scraps of moonstruck poems, in the awareness of surrendering without pain  to the nostalgia and regret of one who no longer has much to say, except for visions of some magnesium proverbs and light misted fog- (magnesium proverbs and light misted fog-from Wolfpack)

 Rating: a mad drift with no return! Listening on headphones is recommended, perhaps an old Sennheiser. Strictly for fans!