891 The Small Faces - Ogden's Nut Gone Flake (1968)

 891 The Small Faces - Ogden's Nut Gone Flake (1968)

Studio Album - Psychedelic Rock




About the Act:

The Small Faces were a British Rock band from London. They started in 1965 with Steve Marriott, Ronnie Lane, Kenney Jones and Jimmy Winston, and were initially a "Mod" band. They morphed into a psychedelic band.  In 1969, Marriott left to form Humble Pie, and the remaining three members teamed up with some others, including Rod Stewart, to be Quiet Melon, and then The Faces. In 1975 both the Faces and Humble Pie broke up, and The Small Faces reformed with their original line-up. They existed for a further three years until hanging up their towels in 1978. 


About the Album:

This was the third album by the band, and was a concept abum. It is named after a brand of tobacco.


My History with this Album:

I have heard the album before, a couple of times.


Review:

1968 and there was a thing happening at the time in British Bands, where psychedelic songs were being mixed in with storytelling songs. This trend was where The Beatles were, and others like Procol Harum and The Moody Blues, and The Kinks were in this trend. In particular, cockney comic songs, reminiscent of the Music Hall days were being peppered into their albums. There is no song more archetypal of this trend than Lazy Sunday from this album. It's a classic.

The first half of this album is a disconnected collection of songs, a couple of them cockney comics, the rest more or less psychedelic, although at times I wonder if they are poking fun at psychedelic tropes.

The second half is a connected set of songs, with spoken links, telling a story, a kind of fairy-tale really. This is spoken by Stanley Baldwin who has a particular style of mixing in a lot of nonsense words in a way that you get the sense of what he is saying without it making semantic sense. It's quite clever really. The songs support the story also, finishing off with "HappyDaysToyTown" which proclaims that life is a bowl of all-bran.

It's an engaging and varied album, worth a good listen. I enjoyed it. I have a soft spot for the gentleness of 60s psychedelia, and the musicianship is good. It's a bit of a light-hearted bumble along, but demands to be more than background music. To my mind it's on the cusp of being a classic.


7.8/10 


Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/7HpNZHNfECoHoFHaB5tnSk

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0hBGL74y9uZ9Q45rC8sFqReG8pOTmmBV

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogdens%27_Nut_Gone_Flake


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