Pink Floyd Discography Review Part 1 - The 60s

Pink Floyd was formed in 1963 (or 1965?), the same year that Doctor Who started as well as the first Amazing Spider-Man comic, so pretty cool year. Pink Floyd are one of if not the most highly celebrated bands of all time, with their albums The Dark Side of The Moon and Wish You Were Here consistently mentioned as some of the best albums of all time. As a result, I am definitely not the most qualified to talk about these guys but I thought I'd share my thoughts either way.

Pink Floyd in the 60s was very different to Pink Floyd in the 70s and later. Early Pink Floyd was very psychedelic and trippy, very very different to the more 'normal' progressive rock styling of the 70s efforts.

The Piper At The Gates of Dawn

The first word that comes to my mind when attempting to describe The Piper At The Gates of Dawn (1967) is 'weird'. It is just a really weird album. The vocals and instruments both contribute to this. The soft and jovial but slightly unhinged vocals combined with the sort of rolling guitars and drums on the first song Astronomy Domine make a nice psychedelic and dreamy atmosphere. Lucifer Sam is a fantastic track and it adds to the psychedelic aspect with the going in and out the left and ride sides. It's pretty wacky but cool. Really nice riff too. The long Interstellar Overdrive with lots of intersecting parts is another highlight. They do the left and right thing again which is really surreal. As the song progresses it becomes very claustrophobic with lots of sounds arriving and disappearing, it's a brilliant piece of work. The Gnome really highlights the weirdness of this album, it's an incredibly strange song about....a gnome. It's quite good actually.
8/10

A Saucerful of Secrets

Despite the departure of Syd Barrett in April of 1968 (although he did contribute to this album), Pink Floyd continued on with Roger Waters at the helm and released A Saucerful of Secrets just 2 months later. Let There Be More Light is a great opener. It is more riff-focused than the songs on the previous album but still very surreal and psychedelic. It just has some really great instrumentation. That's true of the album as a whole really, it has great instrumentation and great atmosphere. It is decidedly less weird than PF's debut, but there is still great stuff here. Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun is quite spooky and ominous with some more great riffs and See-Saw is very tranquil, conveying a sense of being in the park (with a see-saw nearby of course).
A Saucerful of Secrets is on par with The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, and is overall more consistently great, but does not hit the heights of a couple songs of the previous album.
8/10

Pink Floyd also released a soundtrack for the film 'More' and Ummagumma (a few live songs plus a "single experimental contribution from each band member", it's a bit odd) in 1969 but I have no intention of really listening to them closely, as they're not proper studio albums. Overall, 60s Pink Floyd was quirky, psychedelic and fun and they're a great time on the whole.

Thanks for reading! Next we'll be taking a look at 70s Pink Floyd which contains all the rest of their highly celebrated albums!

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Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://www.atomcollectorrecords.com/blog/2019/08/03/pink-floyd-discography-review-part-1-the-60s/

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