Floydian Psychology 101

Writing about the legendary rock band Pink Floyd is like wrestling a dragon into a matchbox. How does one make sense of an inscrutable band considered brilliant (Floyd has influenced artists from Radiohead to Wyclef Jean) and ridiculous (the guys in Floyd once sued each other over the artistic ownership of a gigantic rubber pig) at the same time? How does one pack all the essentials in? This is practically as difficult as reducing Pink Floyd’s body of electric, hallucinogenic music into the obligatory compilation album. Which brings us to “Echoes,” a 2-disc, “best-of” package released by EMI/Sony Music.

A caveat: the album does not in any way serve as a footnote to the career of a dinosaur rock band. (Pink Floyd’s music is still relevant in the age of Dolly the Sheep, sterile boyband music, lackluster rock and Britney Spears.) Nor does it present all of Floyd’s “greatest hits.” To call it that would be preposterous, considering all the diamonds left out like Run Like Hell, Goodbye Blue Sky, etc. Think of it more as a teaser, a sampler, a primer. A drag of hash before graduating to LSD or Mickey Mouse acid drops. The aural equivalent of the White Rabbit inviting Alice into a brave new world. “Echoes,” all 26 tracks of it, will suck listeners into buying the whole Pink Floyd catalogue and delving into the English group’s distorted wonderland.

“Echoes” contains tracks from the ’60s (before founder/singer/guitarist Syd Barrett’s mental breakdown) to output in the late ’80s and early ’90s (when guitarist David Gilmour took over as head Floydian psychologist). Syd-era Floyd songs mesh pop melodies, psychedelia, noise and fairy-tale lyrics; they are abstract acid jams. Post-Barrett songs explore themes of alienation, insanity, disillusionment and the failure of communication; they are artsy, quasi-Classical pieces. Listeners have access to both eras in “Echoes.”

I prefer the darkly magnificent tributes by the rest of Pink Floyd to their fallen leader, such as the title track of Floyd’s 1975 classic “Wish You Were Here.” The song has those jangly acoustic guitars and clever Floydian paradoxes: heaven versus hell, blue skies versus pain, a cameo in The Wall movie in exchange for a lead role in a cage, etc. (Fred Durst and some guys from Goo Goo Dolls did a cover and it was absolute crap — I believe the Englishman’s term for it is shite.) Also included is Shine On You Crazy Diamond from the same album — all seven mind-altering parts. This track is dedicated to “you piper,” “you prisoner,” “you seer of visions,” “you target for faraway laughter,” “you miner for truth and delusion.” Syd, obviously.

There is also Comfortably Numb, which has to be the band’s most evocative number. Dig bassist Roger Waters’ sad, existential lyrics: When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse/Out of the corner of my eye/I turned to look and it was gone/I cannot put my finger on it now/The child has grown/The dream is gone/And I have become comfortably numbed.

Other cuts are Us and Them (with its lilting saxophone intro/solo), Echoes (an epic that builds orgasmically, a song filled with sonar bleeps, screeching seagulls, and sobering epiphanies), Hey You (Waters’ S.O.S. to an apocalyptic world), Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun (a precursor of ambient music) and Sheep (from the underrated “Animals” which is inspired by Orwell’s Animal Farm).

Well, before this piece starts sounding like a glowing press release, allow me to say many die-hard Floyd fans — particularly those who are not rich, capitalist pigs — will find the album (worth P910) darn expensive. “Echoes” is far from being your quintessential Pink Floyd album. Some critics diss the song-selection: Another Brick in the Wall (a jukebox favorite back in the ’70s along with tearjerkers from the Scorpions and Nazareth) made it while Mother and Brain Damage did not. Some opine that since each Floyd song is part of a cohesive, conceptual superstructure, a Pink Floyd compilation album is an anomaly. (A case in point: the track When The Tigers Broke Free lost its impact when taken out of The Wall storyline.) Some lament the absence of previously unreleased tracks. Some simply raise hell for no reason.

My only beef is with the arrangement of the tracks. Instead of a chronological or climactic order, the songs follow an internal sequence of its own that’s difficult to figure out. They were probably arranged in such a way listeners would endure unremarkable tracks from “The Division Bell” and “A Momentary Lapse of Reason.” Sometimes it works (One of These Days metamorphoses suddenly into Us and Them); sometimes it falls flat on its face (High Hopes sputters into Bike).

But give this band some props. After all, Pink Floyd has created big, brainy, transcendent music — love songs for lost souls swimming in an existential fish bowl, a collection of great dance songs for all the crazy diamonds of the world. And while listening to “Echoes” I couldn’t get rid of the feeling there’s someone in my head but it’s not me.