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Rating: Welcome to Planet Barrett! Outside, the elements rage on—cold, meteors, snow—we are under Capricorn, ruled by Saturn, a slow planet with an ashen light... And whose melancholic rings have spun a bit too much around Syd's mind, giving him the aura of an Indian Guru without a crown, sinking him into an ever darker introspection. The madcap wants to return from the astral planets he has explored, he's ready to leap, just look at the cover, there's even a beautiful and round groupie/model waiting to be painted... But the yearning remains choked at the starting blocks.
Here there are no psycho-landings as with the Piper with the Floyds, who anyway participate with Gilmour and Wright like never before so sober—and we orbit around the room in a stripped and unhealthy circle, laced with psychotropic drugs soothing bad trips—and only those who have been through it can understand when peace is elusive at night. We are talking about an ex-Pink, we are talking primarily about sounds: let's say it's an ominous album, well played, despite false starts and anarchies, very "stereophonic", with warm, rounded psychedelic folk sounds that still speak of sun-dripping and putrefying sound carcasses, of seasoned marine wood used to make drums, timpani, guitars, and basses for Soft Machine. Opening those guitars and drums today, we might perhaps count the rings in the wood and be amazed at their antiquity.
Syd's songs as a solitary hermit are there, hanging like so many moons between an essential fuzzy guitar and less of a hippie one and a voice "I sing-you-in the bathroom in the morning" however it comes. Songs, indeed: now you find a SydBarrett naive, absent-minded, ultimately happy and even in love with his more or less real women swimming joyfully like iridescent fish in a padded sound aquarium of Mandrax (Terrapin, Here I go, She Took A Long Cold Look, Love You, Golden Hair); more often he is Dylan-like, lifeless on the floor with black globes in the sky, Eskimo chains tattooed on his head, lost in thought for her in front of a window, or breathing like the water above him(?!) (Dark Globe, If It's In You, Feel, Long Gone); our hero returns to being a delighted child in the dark and threatening luna park of an octopus-shaped carousel (Octopus); to become enigmatic again - on the edge of the ufological (heavily Spaced!!) - in No Man's Land and No Good Trying, two flashbacks of old Pink's returns.
The de-semantization of Barrett's popular music from his time and youth (folk, beat, soul, surf, rock, psychedelia) and thus of the 20th century, reaches here those extreme consequences that the de-structured Jugband Blues foreshadowed, which is... MADNESS! So mental alienation in a freaked-out game of distorting mirrors—but what did he mean by that? . Madcap Laughs is the psychotic diary of an artist on a no-return journey within himself, where by chance you encounter phosphorescent carcasses of songs, skeletal...
The sea breezes and the Santo&Johnny slides at the intimate finale of Late Night, in which Syd softly speaks words finally wise and calm, only serve to accentuate the sense of alienation of the entire album and its author, who in the chorus confirms feeling alone and unreal. To be listened to in all its genuine madness on foggy and gloomy days, hoping for a sunny dawn to dispel the ghosts.
P.S.: What would an imploded Barrett do today? Maybe he'd be a dark and loco D.J. in some nostalgic little place, or disco pub, would no longer want to know about confused guitars, the '60s, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council: which in a sense he did, closing himself with his records in a hotel room. But that's a whole other trip...
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Terrapin (05:04)
I really love you and I mean you
The star above you, crystal blue
Well, oh baby, my hairs on end about you...
I wouldn't see you and I love to
I fly above you, yes I do
Well, oh baby, my hairs on end about you...
Floating, bumping, noses dodge a tooth
The fins a luminous
Fangs all 'round the clown
Is dark below the boulders hiding all
The sunlight's good for us
'Cause we're the fishes and all we do
The move about is all we do
Well, oh baby, my hairs on end about you...
Floating, bumping, noses dodge a tooth
The fins a luminous
Fangs all 'round the clown
Is dark below the boulders hiding all
The sunlight's good for us
'Cause we're the fishes and all we do
The move about is all we do
Well, oh baby, my hairs on end about you...
I really love you and I mean you
The star above you, crystal blue
Well, oh baby, my hairs on end about you...
02 No Good Trying (03:27)
It's no good trying to place your hand
where I can't see because I understand
that you're different from me
yes I can tell
that you can't be what you pretend
and you're rocking me backwards
and you're rocking towards the
red and yellow mane of a stallion horse.
It's no good trying to hold your love
where I can't see because I understand
that you're different from me
yes I can tell
that you can't be what you pretend
the caterpillar hood won't cover the head of you
know you should be home in bed.
It's no good holding your sequin fan
where I can't see because I understand
that you're different from me
yes I can tell
that you can't be what you pretend
yes you're spinning around and around in a car
with electric lights flashing very fast...
05 Dark Globe (02:02)
Oh where are you now
pussy willow that smiled on this leaf?
When I was alone you promised the stone from your heart
my head kissed the ground
I was half the way down, treading the sand
please, please, lift a hand
I'm only a person whose armbands beat
on his hands, hang tall
won't you miss me?
Wouldn't you miss me at all?
The poppy birds way
swing twigs coffee brands around
brandish her wand with a feathery tongue
my head kissed the ground
I was half the way down, treading the sand
please, please, please lift the hand
I'm only a person with Eskimo chain
I tattooed my brain all the way...
Won't you miss me?
Wouldn't you miss me at all?
07 Octopus (03:48)
Trip to heave and ho, up down, to and fro'
You have no word
Trip, trip to a dream dragon
Hide your wings in a ghost tower
Sails cackling at every plate we break
Cracked by scattered needles
The little minute gong
Coughs and clears his throat
Madam you see before you stand
Hey ho, never be still
The old original favorite grand
Grasshoppers green Herbarian band
And the tune they play is "In Us Confide"
So trip to heave and ho, up down, to and fro'
You have no word
Please leave us here
Close our eyes to the octopus ride!
Isn't it good to be lost in the wood
Isn't it bad so quiet there, in the wood
Meant even less to me than I thought
With a honey plough of yellow prickly seeds
Clover honey pots and mystic shining feed...
Well, the madcap laughed at the man on the border
Hey ho, huff the Talbot
"Cheat" he cried shouting kangaroo
It's true in their tree they cried
Please leave us here
Close our eyes to the octopus ride!
The madcap laughed at the man on the border
Hey ho, huff the Talbot
The winds they blew and the leaves did wag
They'll never put me in their bag
The seas will reach and always seep
So high you go, so low you creep
The wind it blows in tropical heat
The drones they throng on mossy seats
The squeaking door will always squeak
Two up, two down we'll never meet
So merrily trip forgo my side
Please leave us here
Close our eyes to the octopus ride!
08 Golden Hair (02:00)
Lean out your window, golden hair
I heard you singing in the midnight air
my book is closed, I read no more
watching the fire dance, on the floor
I've left my book, I've left my room
For I heard you singing through the gloom
singing and singing, a merry air
lean out the window, golden hair...
09 Long Gone (02:50)
She was long gone, long, long gone
she was gone, gone, the bigger they come
the larger her hand 'till no one understands
why for so long she'd been gone.
And I stood very still by the window sill
and I wondered for those I love still
I cried in my mind where I stand behind
the beauty of love's in her eyes...
She was long gone, long, long gone
she was gone, gone, the bigger they come
the larger her hand 'till no one understands
why for so long she'd been gone.
And I borrowed the page
from a leopard's cage
and I prowled in the evening sun's glaze
her head lifted high to the light in the sky
the opening dawn on her face...
She was long gone long, long gone
she was gone, gone, the bigger they come
the larger her hand 'till no one understands
why for so long she'd been gone.
And I stood very still by the window sill
and I wondered for those I love still
I cried in my mind where I stand behind
the beauty of love's in her eyes...
She was long gone long, long gone
she was gone, gone, the bigger they come
the larger her hand 'till no one understands
why for so long she'd been gone.
She was long gone long, long gone...
11 Feel (02:36)
You feel me
away far too empty, oh so alone!
I want to go home
Oh find me inside of a nocturne - the blonde
how I love you to be by my side
they wail...
the crowd on her side
she straggled the bridge by the water...
She misses her crawl
far ley grew
heady aside in a dell
inside an eye be the lonely one, my bride
how I leave on the waddling wheel
they flail...
a gasp shringing
a bad bell's ringing
the angel - the daughter...
You feel me...
13 Late Night (03:17)
When I woke up today
and you weren't there to play
then I wanted to be with you
when you showed me your eyes
whispered love at the skies
then I wanted to stay with you
inside me I feel alone and unreal
and the way you kiss will always be
a very special thing to me...
When I lay still at night seeing
stars high and light
then I wanted to be with you
when the rooftops shone dark
all alone (I) saw a spark
spark of love just to stay with you
inside me I feel alone and unreal
and the way you kiss will always be
a very special thing to me...
If I mention your name
turn around on a chain
then the sky opens for you
when we grew very tall
when I saw you so small
then I wanted to stay with you
inside me I feel alone and unreal
and the way you kiss will always be
a very special thing to me...
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Other reviews
By giov
"You play without rules and keep thinking that your guitar on 'Here I Go' is pretty out of tune. Someone, in the future, will think it’s some strange seventh chord and that you’re a genius."
"You are the most suffocating spark at this precise moment. You are the walrus. You are ‘The Walrus.’"
By .ZoSo.
The Madcap Laughs is a completely naked and raw work, a snapshot of Barrett’s mind, sometimes romantic and poetic and other times desperate and pessimistic.
Amid insecurities, euphoria, and despair, Syd managed to create a true masterpiece. A different masterpiece, more introspective, but still unique.
By endriu
Syd did not want to expose himself to the public, didn’t want to become a VIP or be constantly in the spotlight; he just wanted to tell his rhymes with his guitar to people.
The Madcap Laughs is much more suited to Syd’s personality, free to roam to distant places with his acoustic guitar, without a necessarily full-bodied accompaniment.
By gluca1985
"The songs on 'The Madcap Laughs' are in continuous evolution, suspended in a dimension accessible only to Barrett."
"He gifts us not an album but rather a piece of himself, a snapshot of his life."
By luludia
I want to live here, in this magic bubble, in this limping and crooked grace.
The songs from 'Madcap' were for me the luminous appearance of something I didn’t think existed, a stripped-down and lazy, amateurish and childlike music, capable, like few others, of caressing the heart and soul.
