Cate le Bon on Syd Barrett’s Barrett

Cate Le Bon

Cate Le Bon is one of our brightest stars, releasing her debut album Me Oh My in 2009. The boy Gruff Rhys done good when he found her, as our ears are now all the more grateful – her music is waify like Nico and all wyrd-claustrophobia , centred on a fascination with mortality. We’re only too pleased to have Cate here writing about her discovery and love of the late, great Syd Barrett.

It was almost accidentally that I fell upon the album Barrett by the late and great Syd Barrett. The thought of having not ventured upon it before makes me feel quite unsettled. Thank god for cassette players and sheer perseverance.

During a spat of weekly journeys from South to North Wales armed with a limited number of cassettes, it became apparent that there were only a certain number of times one could listen to Pipes Of Peace and Thriller on rotation before turning violent. We stopped in Porthmadog at the famous Cob Records and whilst I was winding down in the car park my boyfriend ran in and grabbed the only cassettes that they had. We listened to the ones we were more familiar with; Syd Barrett was always overlooked in favour of cassettes we could sing along to. When we’d exhausted everyone else, Syd was finally pushed into the Blaupunkt.

It made no sense to me at all. It was like hearing a different musical dialect that I could not decipher, but I was strangely compelled to return to the record and persevere. I will be forever thankful that I did not own an MP3 player. I would have almost definitely been impatiently flicking towards something that was easier on the brain at this point. So we battled it out on the A470 , me and Syd, and every time I listened I’d hear something new. I started looking forward to car journeys knowing that I was getting closer to assembling the songs out of the cacophony. What I first mistook as a jumbled raucousness was a fragility that at some points would come so close to falling apart but would always manage to hold on by a thread. The instrumentation should be at odds with the songs melodies but it carves its path so confidently it can’t fail to sound sweet. Similarly the lyrics are no picnic but they are beautiful in their own right.  It would be bold to try and give them specific meaning, being that they are wholly abstract and bizarre, but, like a true poet, Barrett is able to create a unique landscape of tragic beauty through his words that, coupled with his music, is utterly unique and genuinely eccentric. When I listen to the album I am always humbled by the thought that had Syd not had an audience then this album would still exists on a 4-track tape machine somewhere. Talent is something that can be done but genius is something that simply must be done.

The album bowls me over every single time I listen to it, it always sounds relevant and exciting to me. The car, along with its Blaupunkt radio, is dust, but I managed to salvage my cassette from the wreckage. Terry the dog wasn’t so fortunate, but good cassettes are so hard to find.

Cate Le Bon is hitting a town near you very soon…

Thursday 4 March – YORK – City Screen Basement
Friday 5 March – NEWCASTLE – Cluny 2
Saturday 6 March – GLASGOW – Stereo
Monday 8 March – MANCHESTER – Deaf Institute
Tuesday 9 March – SHEFFIELD – Harley
Wednesday 10 March – CAMBRIDGE – Portland Arms
Thursday 11 March – LONDON – Lexington
Friday 12 March – BRISTOL – Louisiana