Works (1983)
1. One of These Days
2. Arnold Layne
3. Fearless
4. Brain Damage
5. Eclipse
6. Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun
7. See Emily Play
8. Several Species of Small Fury Animals
Gathered Together in a Cave and
Grooving with a Pict
9. Free Four
10.Embryo
This one’s a bit of a head-scratcher. It’s hard to even know what to classify Works as. It’s not a proper studio album, nor is it really a greatest hits compilation. Everything here is from the early period of Pink Floyd—nothing recorded after 1973—yet the track listing is so oddly chosen and sequenced that it’s difficult to figure out what the intended purpose was in the first place.
It jumps around stylistically in a way that makes the listening experience feel fragmented. That may not seem unusual for a band like Pink Floyd, who had gone through quite a few sonic identities in their first decade, but this album doesn’t try to unify any of it. There’s psychedelic Syd Barrett-era material thrown up against later, more refined cuts without any real flow. It’s a jarring experience, even for longtime fans.
The only real “draw” here is the previously unreleased track Embryo, which had been part of their live set for a while but had never made it to an official studio album. Even here, it feels like a bit of a throw-in—interesting for the completist, maybe, but it doesn’t come close to justifying the release of the album as a whole.
If you're new to Pink Floyd, this is definitely not where you start. And if you’ve been with them a while, chances are you already own most of this material elsewhere—where it’s better presented and better contextualized. This is more of a novelty than anything else, and a strange one at that.
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