I think that the more time you spend with Syd's solo work, the more it will make sense. It is raw and harrowing at times, but it does reveal itself over time. It is not the product of a sane mind, which is the primary difficulty people have with it. It does not follow logical forms. Even when Syd said he wanted to write "pop songs," he was thinking of things like "Arnold Layne" and "Flaming," which are not really pop songs per se.

An interesting context for Syd's solo output is found in the context of the box set, Crazy Diamond, which, of course, contains a lot of outtakes. The surprising thing is that no matter how random those songs may sound, the outtakes have the same aberrant forms; that is to say, the things that seem like idiosyncrasies or mistakes many times are quite deliberate.

Another thing to take into account is that our ears are terribly trained and beaten into submission as far as song form goes. In the time when Syd was recording his solo albums, there was a lot more freedom; not just to take drugs but to experiment with the very idea of sound. AMM, for example, was creating Sonic-Youth-styled sheets of sound in 1967, and this was an influence on Barrett, as evidenced in Pow R Toch, Interstellar Overdrive and Astronomy Domine, as well as the peculiar coda to Bike.

If you listen to some of the artists that surrounded Syd, the solo albums make a lot more sense. For example, Tomorrow, which featured Twink of Pink Fairies fame and Steve Howe. Or Soft Machine's first album, or Kevin Ayers' Joy of a Toy, or Roy Harper's Folkjokeopus or Stormcock. Viewed in the context of other people who were exploring the same areas, it becomes clear that Syd's solo output, although weird, is not completely outside the pale.

In a sense it's an anthropological view that is required, or maybe sociological is what I mean. England in the late 1960s and early 1970s, musically, was a very different place than Amurka in the 21st Century, with our emphasis on robotic precision and our adherence to a restrictive view of song form. To see Syd in context, you have to look at where he was too.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. Your mileage may vary!

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If more of us spent time writing about how to appreciate things, and less about why something sucks, the world would be a better place. Thanks. :)

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I don't know, I'm a really big fan of Syd's solo albums; I think they work in the same way as Nick Drake's albums (particularly Pink Moon) do. They're unorthodox, sure, but there's some extremely good songwriting there.

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