The only Pink Floyd full-length album to feature all five members, A Saucerful Of Secrets is at once a striking portrayal of the band’s clout as one of psychedelic rock’s most influential acts and yet also a cruel reminder of Barrett’s mental instability and eventual removal from the band. Recorded while in the midst of various attempts by the other members to work around or even with Barrett’s continually deteriorating mental state, the album’s succinct cohesion is all the more astounding given the fact that the band had every reason to walk away once it became clear that their primary creative force would no longer be capable of contributing his enormous talents.

It was on this album that Gilmour made his Pink Floyd debut, joining the band more as insurance than improvement at the time in December, 1967. A school friend of Barrett’s, Gilmour’s addition provided the stability needed for the band to at least write and record the new material that would become A Saucerful Of Secrets, though no one could have imagined where the story would go from there. The stories of Barrett’s aberrant behavior have been well documented enough to the point that the severity of its reality for both the band and the musician’s family members has been largely overlooked.

Several songs recorded both for this album as well as the band’s debut were either left off both releases or included on differing versions for UK and US audiences or on the various number of compilations released since. Of the seven songs featured on A Saucerful Of Secrets, Barrett appears on three, with a songwriting credit on only one — album closer “Jugband Blues.” Nostalgic romanticizing aside, the album’s distinction as Pink Floyd’s last hurrah of sorts with all members represented is noteworthy primarily because it signals a shift for the band both emotionally and musically — a move invariably tied to the band’s own eerie similarities as a collective in distancing themselves from comparison.

Opening with “Let There Be More Light,” A Saucerful Of Secrets still holds strongly to the ethereal nature of its predecessor, only now the stratosphere of the music was grounded somewhat by Waters’ own astuteness as a songwriter more concerned with the tangibility of paranoia than with the abstract notion of its effects on him personally. From its simplistic but exacting bass line opening to the full bloom of Gilmour’s lead out solo, “Let There Be More Light” sets the tone for the album’s comparatively more linear musical thread than the erratic but no less brilliantly composed songs of the band’s debut.

The Wright-penned “Remember A Day” features Barrett on slide guitar and, despite the little fanfare given to it, is one of the finest songs from the band’s early days. Wright’s bari-tenor vocals offer an eerily complementary nuance to the hiccupped percussion from Mason and the at times jarring slide guitar from Barrett. The album’s most likely recognizable track is the hypnotically serpentine “Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun” — a five-and-a-half minute digression into psychedelic minimalism and the earliest indicator of what would become Pink Floyd’s balance between paranoid psychosis and popular culture.

Though the subject of Barrett’s contribution to the song alongside Gilmour will likely remain eternally scrutinized, both musicians take a backseat to the combination of Mason, Waters, and most of all, Wright in “Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun” Wright’s proclivity for texturing a song without saturating its tone with unnecessary meanderings was such an immense and crucial part of what defined Pink Floyd’s sound from the very beginning and, interestingly enough, one of the very few characteristics that remained largely unhindered throughout the band’s few evolutionary changes in sound.

The seemingly endless number of permutations of the song give due credit both to Waters’ musicianship as well as the band’s versatility and improvisational instinct. Shoehorned with Wright’s spooky Farfisa organ and the rhythmic hypnosis of Mason’s timpani percussion, Waters’ vocals undoubtedly made quick work of any speculation that Pink Floyd would falter in the wake of its abrupt and largely unwanted lineup change. A clear depiction of every powerful component of Pink Floyd’s sound and dynamic as a group, “Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun” is arguably the definitive song from this era of the group’s existence and a hauntingly beautiful picture of the band’s most successful and powerful formula of less is more.

Featuring Gilmour, Mason, and Wright on vocals “Corporal Clegg” plays primarily to the psychedelic leanings of Piper with layered voiceovers and bizarre instrumentation taking the spotlight of each verse leading into the by-the-numbers ’60s-era vocal harmonization of the chorus. It’s not to say the song is meritless in its own right but rather that it echoes the song structure typical of those psychedelic and experimental contemporaries of Pink Floyd. Even with the obvious influence or mirroring of the pop music context of the time, Gilmour’s guitar work cleverly incorporating the relatively few pedal options at the time alongside the deliberately ridiculous kazoo-lead bridge give the song the characteristic of being one only Pink Floyd could write.

The album’s title track is a masterful achievement both from a sound technology perspective and for the band members themselves as the instrumental’s nearly twelve minutes plays in such a way as to suggest a long-rooted understanding between each musicians rather than the reality of this being their first creative collaboration with all members (excluding Barrett) credited as songwriters. For all its extremity and avant-garde gesticulations, the album’s title track is the first glimpse of how rewarding the band’s congruency could be both for themselves as artists and the listening audience as well.

Closing out A Saucerful Of Secrets is the eerily appropriate “Jugband Blues,” seeming like another one of Barrett’s harmless if slightly off kilter and absurd pop songs. Listening to the song’s lyrics and considering the context of when Barrett would have likely written them, and “Jugband Blues” becomes something of a ghost in the Pink Floyd catalogue, standing at the tail end of an album that while signaling a farewell to the troubled musician could not every fully rid themselves of his presence within virtually every aspect of the band’s success and eventual twilight.

Barrett’s typically abstract if sparsely referenced lyrical mode is somewhat muted on “Jugband Blues,” making a substantially well-suited argument that lines such as “I’m awfully considerate of you to think of me here / And I’m much obliged to you for making it clear / That I’m not here” are little more than directed statements at his band mates. The song also continues the at the time ever present indication that Barrett had most probably lost a general sense of reality and was entering a full state of psychosis with lines like ” And I’m wondering who could be writing this song” offering at least minimal proof of the same emotional detachment that had plagued both Barrett himself and his band mates and friends.

The song would be the last Barrett would write for Pink Floyd and even as the album’s most disjointed track from a comparative standpoint, “Jugband Blues” is difficult to listen to without considering the weight of its words both on the fragmented mind of its creator and the conflicted band mates and friends who felt compelled to keep the track on the album. Barrett’s distinguishing vocals are as disarming as ever, making the track that much more unsettling in the larger picture surrounding its creation. Whatever childlike naivety and brilliance may have overcome the adult mind of Barrett, “Jugband Blues” remains a captivating if tragic end piece both for the first permutation of Pink Floyd’s ever evolving sound and for the man who’d lost himself along the way, far too soon.