The Madcap Laughs

Syd Barrett

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 7, 1990)
• Original Release Date: January 3, 1970
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Capitol
• ASIN: B000007MVM
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (102 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #44,050 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Having left Pink Floyd in 1968 after a daily LSD habit had taken its toll, Syd Barrett's first solo album finally appeared two years later with ex-Floyd sidekicks David Gilmour and Richard Wright riding shotgun with him in the studio. The Madcap Laughs is a brilliant but brittle album, with every strum of the electric guitar seeming to take its toll on Barrett's increasingly frayed nerve strings. On songs such as "Love You," his state of mind is well concealed beneath the sort of jolly jangle-pop Blur would later indulge in. On "Dark Globe," however, the strain is palpable: "Please lend a hand ... won't you miss me? Wouldn't you miss me at all?" he pleads, ominously. The best tracks are "Octopus," which possesses all the controlled mania of early Floyd, and "Golden Hair," a still moment of musical rapture whose lyric is taken from a James Joyce poem. --David Stubbs

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

48 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars SUCEEDING WITHOUT MEANING TO, March 8, 2002

By	Kerry Leimer (Makawao, Hawaii United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

There is no question that Syd cuts a fascinating figure, full of loss and mystery. But, set the personality stuff aside - something you should do with everything you listen to - and pay attention to the music.

First and foremost, intentionally or not, Syd's lyrics are high art. Not self-concious, referential and elitist nonsense. These lyrics are poetry, and poetry can only result from experience. We don't need to know or speculate about that experience, we need only comprehend that it somehow resulted in some amazing work.

The music is the perfect match for the words. The feeling of accident, of the joy of finding the right note and the frustration of being just sharp or just flat, a split-second early or a half-second late, is all there to hear. It brings a remarkable one-to-one feel to the music, somewhere between the rehearsed and the improvised, and it never comes off as self-concious or calculated.

What are the influences? I can't detect any -- short of the James Joyce poem made into the song "Golden Hair". Has anyone else ever given us this specific combination of intent and accident? None that I'm aware of. The Madcap Laughs and Barrett both work because the artist we're listening to is a natural at what he does. Whether the drugs heightened his ability or killed it hardly matters now. The work is still here, still with us and like all lasting art, it resists classification and interpretation. Let's just say that whatever life brought to Syd, his particular nervous system had a singular way of transforming it into the transparent and immediate experience of a music all his own.

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Disintigration On Vinyl, December 11, 2003

By	Matthew Comegys (Ueda, Nagano, Japan) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Ok, so it's more like disintigration on CD these days. Syd Barrett's first solo album is the work of a man completely falling apart. As the founder of Pink Floyd, Barrett ingested enough LSD to drive a medium sized country mad, and by 1968 and 1969 (when this album was recorded) his mental state was very schizophrenic. Even with these problematic mental disorders (or maybe becasue of), Barrett managed to create a classic.

Following Barrett's dismissal from Pink Floyd in early 1968, the band's managers followed Barrett, assuming that the band could not survive without their creative light (oops). While time has obviously proved them wrong, they soon set Barrett to work with producer Malcomb Jones and the trippy combo The Soft Machine to create a pop album. Barrett's performances soon proved to be erratic and strange, and it was soon apparent that the music was not going to set the teen scene on fire. The sessions were shelved (although temporarily as many tracks are included on the album) and "Octopus" was unleashed as a single. It unsurprisingly did not go far.

Cut forward a few months and former bandmate Roger Waters and Syd's own replacement David Gilmour wheel Barrett back into the studio for some more fun and games. These sessions were acoustically based, and allowed Barrett to do pretty much whatever he wanted to do, even if it was endlessly strange.

The final album is a somewhat daunting listen, but quite phenomenal if you can get your mind into Syd's world, where things like rhythm are rather amorphous. "No Good Trying," "No Man's Land," "Octopus," and "Late Night" are strange but amazing masterpieces of psychedelic rock. On the first two especially, the backing musicians sound like they're furiously trying to keep up with Syd (no good trying?) and the music is always on the verge of flying apart at the seams in a wonderful and interesting sort of way. "Terrapin," "Dark Globe," and "Golden Hair" are the more acoustic classics.

Now I'm guilty of a bit of blasphemous resequencing in regards to my own copy of "The Madcap Laughs." I've taken out "Feel" and "If It's In You," which I think qualify as acoustic shambles, and replace them with "Opel" and "Silas Lang." These are outtakes from the Malcomb Jones sessions that I think are amazing (especially "Opel") and bewilderingly left off the album. They can be found on the otherwise hit or miss odds-and-sods complation "Opel."

Although more expensive, I heartily recommend the EMI reissue of this disc. The remastering is far superior to Capitol's disc, and the alternate takes are illuminating. Barrett never played a song the same way twice; that was likely part of his madness. Better yet, get all of Barrett's remastered studio legacy in the "Shine On Crazy Diamond" box set (which may be a bit difficult as I think it's out of print).

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Unforgotten Legend, July 11, 2006

By	D. E. Witmyer (Altoona, PA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Syd Barrett was a poet and genius of the highest order. Fragmented and tattered, the songs on this album lay it all out on the table. This is the reflection of a man who was dying on the inside and who's reality was slipping away literally as he sang.

Songs like the opening Terrapin and the closing masterpiece Late Night seem to speak volumes of the feeling of disassociation he must have felt in his life at the time. And, the truth is, every song in between the two are more than worth the their weight in gold. Jaunty tunes, such as Love You, Here I Go and Octopus, mingle with material that is, for a lack of better words, absolutely soul crushing.

The production is fittingly sparse -- some songs are literally just Syd and his acoustic (Dark Globe, Feel, If It's In You), while many others are filled with small psychedelic flourishes that keep the ambience intact. The only low point on the album exists in the admittedly weak She Took A Long Cold Look. This song would have found a better home on the B-sides collection Opel (ironically, the song Opel would have been a perfect fit). Long Gone is a darkly chilling highlight -- chromatic acoustic scalings, thick harmonies, and dynamically interesting organs make for a particularly sinister song.

Syd's voice is often broken and fragile. On songs like Dark Globe, it is on the verge of sounding tortured. This IS NOT a pop album and it IS NOT an extension of his more whimsical Piper At The Gates Of Dawn album. Be forewarned: this is an album that will haunt you for years to come.

-This review was written in his honor. We will miss you.

So long, Syd. (January 6, 1946 - July 7, 2006)-