It's a little more tricksy to accept "A Saucerful of Secrets" on its own terms, one admits, because Barrett is still a lingering and troubling presence. Of course, he isn't entirely removed from his membership in the band, but he's limited to what little he can handle; he's no longer the prime songwriter (there's only one Barrett composition on the album), and he can offer only an occasional vocal and a few guitar turns. But he and they make it work regardless.

Barrett takes the alternate vocal lead (new guitarist David Gilmour begins establishing himself as the new prime voice of the Floyd, and just so) for the kickoff track, the shimmering "Let There Be More Light," and in fact plays the surprisingly smooth guitar solo that rides out the track (surprising when you recall Barrett's earlier and trademark spiky guitar style, as though he were emulating the clean, less-is-more style Gilmour would soon make his trademark.) Barrett also sings the short bridge lines ("Why can't we break today") for Rick Wright's pleasant, rumble-rhythmed "Remember A Day" and squirts a few spiky high-tone slide guitar lines. And if it wasn't for Roger Waters' songwriting credit, you'd swear "Corporal Clegg" was a "Piper" leftover - it's one of Barrett's two lead vocals on the album, the guitar work is unmistakeably Barrett's, and the whackiness of the song would have fit reasonably within either "Piper" or as a B-side to a "Piper"-extracted single. In between, though, is Waters's "Set The Controls For The Heart of The Sun," which would become a concert tour-de-force soon enough and deservedly so - the blues-extracted thematic riff (played on his low strings by Gilmour) is a gripper from its first measure, the lyric (practically whispered by Waters) is beguiling, and the floating improvised sound washes in the middle (notice Gilmour's subtle, spare vibraphone tones throughout) drop hints that the title track wold soon enough deliver.

For "A Saucerful of Secrets" (album and title track, which track was actually "Saucer Full of Secrets Suite") is the Pink Floyd that the world would become accustomed soon enough - the sonorous, pure sound block, experimentation and improvisation in the first two of three segments (Nick Mason's hypnotic drum rhythm drives the second of the three), as Waters, Gilmour, and organist Rick Wright wring sheet after sheet of ethereal squall, drone and wash with nothing more than some well-timed, well-frictioned tweaks and applications to bass, guitar, and keyboard. (The Floyd purists have a point when they say that they didn't need synthesisers to produce dimension-jumping "space rock," as they added in years to come, beginning with "Obscured By Clouds" - this is astonishing sound work just from ordinary electric instruments.) The "Saucerful" finale, of course, is a gripping pipe organ progression, joined in the final two soundings by a surging vocalising chorus; the entire 11-minute suite pretty much lays the blueprint for Pink Floyd's soon-to-be-familiar dreamscape rock that who knows how many would try to approximate and fall flat on their faces doing so.

You go from there to the prettiest composition Rick Wright ever yielded up for a Pink Floyd album, "See-Saw," with a rocking waltz of phasing keyboards and acoustic guitars, David Gilmour's whispery singing, Waters laying across a gentle bass sway, and Mason drumming as sensitively as anyone in rock at the time was doing. If there's a better return to this world from the extraterrestrial extension that was "Saucerful's" title track than this, I would be hard pressed to identify it.

But then you conclude with "Jugband Blues," the Barrett composition that ends his Pink Floyd association so jarringly. (You don't need me to tell you this is neither jugband music nor blues, do you?) It serves more to suggest what his solo career might have been (it takes great charity to call his three solo albums valuable to anyone but the most stubborn Barrett completist; with few exceptions, the dissembling incoherence of the delivery renders them unlistenable) if he hadn't gone so far beyond the edge that he left more than shards if anything of his once-formidable talent. As the one last certain emission Barrett had left to deliver, and with his soon-to-be-former Floyd bandmates giving him sympathetic support, "Jugband Blues" is Barrett's sad epitaph, right down to the haunting verse that closes the song, over the isolated acoustic guitar Barrett strums almost as an implied instrument: "And the sea isn't green/and I love the Queen/and what exactly is a dream?/what exactly is a joke?".

What you have, in other words, is an album born of a patient's rise from its unexpected sickbed and finding something different to say with an enrapturing way to say it, mostly. On those terms, "A Saucerful of Secrets" remains an aesthetic success. (Considering their original foolhardy idea - the band had actually pondered retaining Barrett to compose songs but otherwise not tour or record with them, until the depth of his plunge became too much to allow even that option - the album as it is is even more impressive.) It shouldn't have to be battered over its own head with continuing comparisons to "The Piper At The Gates of Dawn" - there is nothing but good music on this set and enough of it is great music in its own right. And even if Pink Floyd couldn't go very long from there without referring back to the fall of its original leader, that they did so at all considering how they lost their first fulcrum testifies to something indomitable.


A monumental work of art   August 25, 2001
 7 out of 9 found this review helpful

Pink Floyd's 1968 release A Saucerful of Secrets stands as one of my favorite albums and towers as one of the greatest musical creations of the century. The ability of Pink Floyd to personify the music and transport the listener to a completely different world and state of mind is what makes this such a fantastic album. The pieces on this album are more than rock songs, they are stories brought to life with nearly flawless use of instrumentation, sound effects, and song structure. Unlike other rock songs where lyrics and volume are the most common vehicles for displaying the message of the song, the tone and feel of the music on Saucerful gives the listener a clear idea of the song's purpose, one that is far more descripitive than words. Rick Wright's somber and nostalgic "Remember a Day" is a perfect example of the music's power. While the soft piano part elicits the peaceful mood of childhood, Syd Barret's haunting slide guitar brings to life the trapped and desperate longing for youth that is at the heart of the song. The opening organ, the eerie guitar riff of the verse, and the final guitar coda give "Let There Be More Light" the feeling of a strange mystical encounter. "See Saw" is a smooth, summer childhood fantasy, and the chaotic middle bridge and quiet acoustic finale give "Jugband Blues" the true sense of insanity felt by Syd Barrett at the time of its composition. Each member of the group gave a sincere and emotional performance of the album, which is one reason that the album may be Pink Floyd's strongest collective work and it is almost certainly their greatest artistic achievement.