10 Sophomore Slump Albums By Amazing Bands

If you were to ask anyone in Pink Floyd these days, the beginning of the band pretty much lived and died on the strength of Syd Barrett’s songs. Despite him slowly losing control of his sanity over the course of the band’s tenure, Piper At the Gates of Dawn was the perfect introduction that Floyd could have made in the late ‘60s, mixing their progressive tendencies and space rock sound with the flower power aesthetic of psychedelia. If Piper sounded like the band were on acid though, A Saucerful of Secrets is what happens when they start taking a little too much of it.

Although there are still good songs to be found on Saucer, this was the moment where the band started to fracture, being the last record to feature Syd as a prominent member and being replaced by David Gilmour shortly afterwards. That’s not to say Syd didn’t show up to work here, bringing some of the most zany effects that a Floyd record had ever seen, especially on the back half when you have songs driven by kazoos and different avant garde pieces that made you start to wonder how far away they were straying from rock and roll.

When you look past the gimmicks though, songs like Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun is one of the first songs where Roger Waters’s signature brand of darkness starts to creep into their sound, which only got more off the wall once Syd left. A Saucerful of Secrets might be a good record by the band’s psychedelic standards, but given what happens after this record, it starts to feel like a sad end of an era.