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ALBUM REVIEW

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn - Pink Floyd
by All4one
RATING - 10/10

(Standout tracks - "Lucifer Sam", "Flaming", "Interstellar Overdrive", "The Gnome", "Bike")

What do you think of when you think of the best albums of 1967? I know that's a bit of a doozy, since there were more great albums than you could stuff into a refridgerator, but just think. The first things to pop into your head will probably be Sgt. Pepper's by the Beatles, The Doors' debut, or Jimi Hendrix's Are You Experienced?. But there is another album from this year that many casual listeners disregard, and that is the Floyd's fine debut, "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn".

Which Floyd you may ask? Erm, the pink one, of course.

If you're expecting something along the lines of the smooth, leisurely paced, eerily elegance of "Dark Side of the Moon", then you're in for a completely different ride. This album was the only Floyd album to be made under the full leadership of original frontman, Syd Barrett, and it's safe to say that his writing style differed greatly from the somewhat sour and downer mood of Waters' output. In fact, you could almost call the two polar opposites. Syd was known for his odd, whimsical, cheery, nearly childlike form of writing that addressed topics as strange as gnomes, bikes, and scarecrows.

Er, in fact, those are all song titles in the album ("The Gnome", "Bike", "The Scarecrow"). But nonetheless, the universe that his lyrics create are downright charming.

Many people didn't understand the ways of Syd, and that's pretty much because he lived in his own little world, complete with all the strange things he wrote about.

Unlike Pink Floyd's later work that had a haunting, quiet tone, the style of this album is frantic, and, a lot of times, out-of-this-world weird, and not just because of Syd's lyrics. The music itself is just as strange - Rick Wright's spacy organs are compliented by Nick Mason's jogging drumbeats and Syd's almost raw-sounding guitars.

This album isn't all whimsy and wonder, though. When Syd isn't rambling on about all the oddities that would spew from his mind, the rest of the band offers a chaotic alternative - extreme freak-out instrumentals that showcased the band jamming live in the studio, in a largely experimental manner that matched their live performances of the time. For the most part, these are all condensed down to the standard song length of around 3-4 minutes. However, Pink Floyd break their time-restraint chains on the 9-minute epic, "Interstellar Overdrive".

This song is pure madness. Madness. It's the song where all chaos breaks loose in the magical world of the album - dissonant key riffs, furious guitar lines, unabashed drumming.

But as influential and important as these songs were, these kinds of jams are mostly what make the album so inaccessible to the average ear, and possibly the reason why it has been forgotten by so many listeners.

The Beatles or The Beach Boys, for example, were all based around melody and flawless song structure. However, for most of Piper, there seems to be no structure at all. Even on more conventional tracks, the song can occasionally trail off into something else - into a distant, spacy solo of some sort, or a sudden guitar break.

But, by no means is this a flaw. In fact, the distractedness of the album happens to be the key of the album, and is part of what makes it so exciting. It never wears out, because like any great album, you find something new with each listen. Every song is like a different world you get to explore, with countless things to be found. And that is what I call a masterpiece of an album.

Besides, if you got through The Doors' "The End", you'll surely be able to get through "Interstellar Overdrive".

[NOTE - I will be doing reviews of every Pink Floyd studio album, with a new review coming out every Friday. Stay tuned next week for a review of the Floyd's second album, "A Saucerful of Secrets".]

Last edited by All4one (2012-10-04 06:11:31)