Baby Lemonade

Syd Barrett was Pink Floyd's founding genius and first casualty — his unraveling from LSD use and mental illness in 1968 removing him from the band he had created. The two solo albums he made in 1970, with production by Roger Waters and David Gilmour, document an extraordinary and troubled intelligence.

Baby Lemonade, from The Madcap Laughs, has the quality of much of the album: acoustic guitar and voice, the arrangements assembled around performances that were sometimes fragmentary, the lyrics occupying a space between nonsense and profound personal symbolism.

Barrett's retreat from music — returning to Cambridge, living with his mother, declining all contact with the music world — is one of rock's most complete disappearances. He died in 2006. The Madcap Laughs is his most complete statement.