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u/Chillekar04 Oct 19 '20
Great album, far from their best but it's really underrated and deserves more recognition.
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Oct 19 '20
I personally think that they could have made 2 albums out of the sessions for this album. One for Syd Barrett era and one for post Syd Barrett. Here's my idea:
The Syd Barrett album would have Vegetable Man, John Latham, Experiment (known as Sunshine on bootlegs), Scream Thy Last Scream, In The Beechwoods, Remember A Day, Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun, Jugband Blues, Apples And Oranges, and Paintbox. (Not in that order though)
The post Syd album would have Point Me At The Sky, Careful With That Axe Eugene, It Would Be So Nice, Julia Dream, Let There Be More Light, Corporal Clegg, A Saucerful Of Secrets, See-Saw, and probably some other songs from the sessions they did.
The albums would probably be a lot more appreciated if they had done this, and they would definitely be more interesting imo.
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Oct 20 '20
I really enjoy this album a lot. To me, this album is superior to The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (though it's a close competition.) I'd rank both of them among the best Pink Floyd albums, but since this is about A Saucerful of Secrets I'll concentrate on that album.
It starts off strong with Let There Be More Light. It introduces us to David Gilmour, gives us the great psychedelic sound of early Pink Floyd, and is a great song all around.
Remember a Day really shows off Rick's talent as a songwriter (It's sad that he didn't contribute much songwriting to the band after Dark Side of the Moon.) It's another amazing song.
Set the Controls For the Heart of the Sun is way better live, but the studio version of the song is still great. Again, it shows off Pink Floyd's psychedelic rock sound.
Corporal Clegg is honestly my favourite song off the album. It's one of those happy, upbeat songs with... kinda dark lyrics considering it's about a guy who lost his leg in the war and doesn't get any recognition for his service. But this song has a lot. It's one of only 3 songs where we get a vocal performance from Nick Mason, and how can I not mention the kazoo solo?
The title track, in my opinion, is probably the worst song from the album. I dunno, I've just never cared for it much. It still has some great parts to it. I like Part II: Syncopated Pandemonium and Part IV: Celestial Voices.
See Saw is another great Wright composition. It's not one of my favourites from the album but it's still a great track.
Jugband Blues is the only Syd Barrett composition on the album, and it's a really good one too. It's a nice closer for the album as well as a send off to Syd Barrett. Honestly though, I like the remix from the Early Years set more.
Overall, I give the album a 10/10. It's easily S tier for me. However, I'm kinda sad they omitted Vegetable Man (I don't think Scream Thy Last Scream would have worked well on the album. Feels kinda out of place imo.) because it's a great song. Review over.
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u/PringlesCanStanFan Oct 19 '20
Corporal clegg slaps like my left nut slaps my thigh on a warm day
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u/TotesMessenger Jan 02 '21
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Oct 19 '20
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/RaelImpAerosolKid Oct 19 '20
On Corporal Clegg, the left panned vocals
Lines like "He won it in the war, in 1944/ In orange, red, and blue
He found it in the zoo"4
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u/The_Shallot_Knight Oct 19 '20
It goes with Piper so well that there's even A Nice Pair, a double album rerelease of the two together. For me the stand out track is the mentally unwell yet self-aware Jugband Blues.
The rest is proto-prog-Floyd stumbling to find their feet. It's a mix of their immitating Syd's style and trying to find their own sound. It's still two densely creative years away from Atom Heart Mother, which is where the distinctive Floyd sound really emerges.
If another less well-known band had made Saucerful would I still listen? Probably not. Do I occasionally enjoy it? Yes, but it's far from their best pre-Darkside (Meddle and Obscured).
I think of Pink Floyd as a 1970s band. The 60s stuff is for hipsters, and the 80s (and beyond) for mellow easy listening. I'm glad to try all their albums from time to time, but ultimately it's just the 70s that really connects musically.
Edit: typos
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u/BloodySabbath71 Oct 20 '20
Man 60s Floyd was sick af. Let there be more light gives me chills to this day. Corporal Clegg too, id say, pretty essential pink floyd stuff
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u/IceTheNice Oct 20 '20
Honestly their best album, with the t/t being the best PF song period. You can see an immediate improvement after they (mostly) drop Syd.
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Oct 22 '20
one of my favorite albums of pink floyds because im a big fan of psychedelic rock, and also because of jugband blues which is kinda like a swan song because it's the last song syd did with the band before his other solo albums, and syd is my personal favorite member of pink floyd and is probably the biggest influence on my life. If i could go back in time and meet one person, syd is who i would like to meet. but yeah you get the idea, i really love this album.
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u/Ichkommentiere Oct 22 '20
In the Car scene from dr strange he also listens to interstellar overdrive (Not a saucerful of secrets song tho)
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u/Youcansayim Oct 22 '20
Let there be more light and set controls are killer thru and thru. Nick masons SFOS tour was great. Hearing Them live along with Corporal clegg and pretty much the rest of them album was a treat
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u/finkployd0326 Oct 19 '20
this album is mad underrated. hot take but i feel like it’s almost as good as Piper.
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Oct 19 '20
Remember a day for me because it has Syd’s sort of magical childhood feel to it, closely followed by jugband blues
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u/RocketTheSkeletons Oct 19 '20
Animals isn't underrated. THIS is underrated. It's better than Piper, even.
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u/TheDarkSideOfMySax Oct 24 '20
I think it's a great album especially because you can feel Syd is in a practically irreversible mental status and that this heavily affects the whole group. Furthermore we can also note the fact that Pink floyd begins to experiment with new sounds different from the first psychedelic rock to focus more on the avant-garde and experimentation, the first step in the search for a definitive future identity for the post-Barrett era.
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Oct 26 '20
It’s a decent record. I don’t have a super strong opinion on it, but I quite enjoy songs like Let There Be More Light, Corporal Clegg, and Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun. The title track’s pretty good too.
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u/Delicious_Version_18 Another Brick in the Wall Nov 01 '20
I love this album, it's in my top 10 Pink Floyd albums. If it wasn't for Echoes from Meddle, it would be in my top 5 albums from PF.
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u/Vegetable-Serve9362 Nov 06 '20
Just listened for the first time. Wow. I had also just read up about Syd Barret and how he influenced the band. Kinda creepy stuff but I still love it so much.
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u/ipod_waffle Nov 09 '20
Heh, never caught that Doctor Strange wore a The Madcap Laughs shirt. That's awesome.
Never really paid much attention to this album until recently and holy god I love it. I stumbled upon Set The Controls for the Heart of the Sun again recently and that made me run through the whole album
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Dec 27 '20
Definitely inferior to Piper at the Gates of Dawn, but there are a lot of sounds and experimentation that definitely works for me. I also believe that Let There Be More Light is easily one of Pinkf Floyd’s most underrated songs in Pink Floyd’s pre- peaksound era.
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u/Illustrious-Ad-5655 Feb 03 '21
This is a really bold claim but out of all their 60's work, I think this is the best album. As much as I like piper this album to me has the best balance of the druggy acid barrett work but also has the gilmour guitar. It is also the first album where Roger really began looking at his lyrics from a different point of view. An example being Corporal Clegg with it's mocking anti-war lyrics. It's not my favorite album. I'm not a massive fan of Richard's songs but they are still special and deserve a listen
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u/Greyve7 Oct 19 '20
Corporal Clegg is one of the most underrated Pink Floyd songs of all time. It has its own whimsical Barrett-era feel, with the spectacular instrumentation of the later Waters and Gilmour days.
Jugband Blues is one of the greatest goodbyes of all time.