"You only have to read the lines; they're scribbley black and everything shines."
While there had already been a burgeoning underground psychedelic music scene underway in the U.K. and elsewhere for at least a year (e.g. the Los Angeles and San Francisco scenes in the U.S.), the summer of 1967 was the point at which this psychotropic-inspired sound crossed into the mainstream with the release of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. While an endless amount of material has been written about the cultural and artistic impact of this album (I might even try to add to this if I ever decide to post some "Fab Four"), Pink Floyd's debut LP, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn is arguably the most innovative, experimental and hallucinogenic masterpiece released that iconic summer. At this point in their development, Pink Floyd was essentially Syd Barrett's band, and while the the lyrics are often replete with images of childhood and fairytales (the album's title is borrowed from The Wind and the Willows), musically, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, while containing more than its share of whimsy, is often quite dark thanks to Rick Wright's electric organ work, which would prove to be highly influential on later neo-psych movements such as The Paisley Underground. And this is the reason Pink Floyd's debut outshines many of its "summer of love" contemporaries; rather than offering straight forward pop tinged with psychedelic refraction or hippie anthems to acid utopias, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn explores both the intense euphoria and the terrifying chaos comprising a psychedelic experience. A perfect example of this brilliant duality is "Matilda Mother"; while Barrett sings from the perspective of a child oscillating between fantasy and fear, the music progressively grows creepy and unsettling. However, things are even darker on "Astronomy Domine," which contains some great acid guitar work and constitutes the aural equivalent of falling down a rabbit hole. The Piper at the Gates of Dawn manages to sound both time-bound and timeless, and in doing so, it stands as one of the most essential and influential albums of the psychedelic era.
