Relics

A hastily cobbled together cash-in by EMI imprint Starline following the surprise success of Atom Heart Mother, 1971’s Relics was further sullied by some ham-fisted “re-processed stereo” overhauls of the previous decade’s mono recordings. Yet the compilation was, and remains, a fascinating portrait of Pink Floyd in the ‘60s, dusting off curios from the band’s pre-prog rock stardom beginnings. Both the unsettling Joe Meek-like pop of the band’s 1967 debut single “Arnold Layne” and “See Emily Play”’s era-defining psychedelic whimsy were included (neither of which featured on debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn), making it a gateway drug for acolytes of the band’s fallen Icarus, Syd Barrett. Yet with Barrett’s tragic genius now fairly well established, it’s the group’s post-Syd fumblings that fascinate: The band’s contributions to 1969 counterculture film More, including David Gilmour’s almost Stooges-like thrash “The Nile Song”; a jazzy unreleased Roger Waters track “Biding My Time” where he sounds surprisingly like Harry Nilsson; and Rick Wright fronted B-sides “Paintbox” and “Julia’s Dream,” both wonderfully of their time drifts of melancholic psychedelia from the brief period where it was Wright, not Waters or Gilmour, who looked likely to be Pink Floyd’s next guiding creative light.