** 2025 stock ** Released in 1988, almost two decades after Syd Barrett’s brief solo burst, Opel functions less as a standard rarities round‑up and more as an x‑ray of his post‑Pink Floyd studio world. Drawn from sessions cut between 1968 and 1970, it collects eight previously unheard songs and alternate versions of six already released pieces from The Madcap Laughs and Barrett, finally answering long‑circulating rumours that reels of potent, unfinished material were still sitting in the archives. Issued on Harvest in the UK and Capitol in the US, the album effectively became Barrett’s “third” studio record, even as it blurred the line between work‑in‑progress and finished statement.
A large part of Opel’s charge lies in the title track, a six‑minute, near‑naked performance that many listeners came to regard as one of Barrett’s most devastating songs. Over a halting, minor‑key guitar pattern, he strings together images of distance, paralysis and unreachable connection, the fragility of the performance enhancing rather than undermining its emotional weight. Around it orbit other recovered pieces that deepen the picture of his writing: the desert‑hallucination narrative of “Swan Lee (Silas Lang),” the childlike yet unsettling miniatures “Milky Way,” “Word Song” and “Dolly Rocker,” the skeletal demo “Rats,” the instrumental sprawl of “Lanky (Part One).” Alternate takes of “Dark Globe” (here titled “Wouldn’t You Miss Me”) and “Wined and Dined” reframe familiar material with different emphases and phrasing, reminding the listener that even Barrett’s most “finished” songs existed in multiple, unstable versions.
Behind the tracklist, Opel also documents the extended network that tried to help Barrett corrall these songs to tape. Producers include Malcolm Jones, Peter Jenner, David Gilmour and Roger Waters, with Soft Machine’s Robert Wyatt, Mike Ratledge and Hugh Hopper appearing on “Clowns and Jugglers (Octopus),” stitching a faint jazz‑psych undercurrent through the folk‑blues skeletons. The album was originally planned to feature the long‑mythologised unreleased Pink Floyd songs “Scream Thy Last Scream” and “Vegetable Man,” remixed for inclusion before the band withdrew permission, leaving Opel to concentrate wholly on solo‑era material. Even without those, the record underlines how prolific Barrett remained during this period, despite the well‑documented personal and psychological turbulence that soon forced him out of the studio altogether.
Critically, Opel was received as more than a completist’s footnote. Reviews noted its “charming” and sometimes harrowing glimpses of Barrett’s songwriting, singling out the title track, “Swan Lee (Silas Lang),” “Dark Globe” and “Milky Way” as standouts that could have anchored a full third album had circumstances allowed. Commercially it failed to chart, but its reputation grew, especially after it was remastered and reissued in 1993 alongside The Madcap Laughs and Barrett in the Crazy Diamond box set, and again in a newly remastered edition in 2010. Heard now, Opel still feels like opening a time capsule with the lid not quite screwed on: songs half in shadow, studio chatter and false starts erased but somehow implied, a body of work that never fully coalesced into an “official” album yet remains indispensable to understanding the strange, brief arc of Syd Barrett’s recorded life.
