At their best, The Madcap Laughs and Barrett can be entrancing. Against muted backdrops that suggest a warmer, more bucolic answer to the Floyd’s epic psychedelia, Barrett strums a guitar and gently sing-speaks lyrics that combine nursery-rhyme innocence with nightmare visions. His idiosyncrasi... 

 At their best, The Madcap Laughs and Barrett can be entrancing. Against muted backdrops that suggest a warmer, more bucolic answer to the Floyd’s epic psychedelia, Barrett strums a guitar and gently sing-speaks lyrics that combine nursery-rhyme innocence with nightmare visions. His idiosyncrasi... 

 Crazy Diamond collects all three albums, plus even more depressing bonus tracks, to create a picture of madness that verges on the exploitive.  

 The problem is exacerbated on Opel, which collects leftovers such as “Word Song,” in which the singer sounds like he’s trying to identify the strange pictures floating through his ravaged mind.  

 The Best of Syd Barrett, on the other hand, plays like a celebration of eccentricity. Bereft of the filler that marred Barrett’s studio releases, it’s a coherent statement of outsider art, fleshed out with two previously unreleased songs. These include the solo acoustic “Bob Dylan Blues,”...