The Small Faces - The Essential Collection (2005)

×

The Small Faces - The Essential Collection (2005)

Close

Any compilation of the Small Faces is going to have it's work cut out trying to document the best work of the best Mod band. Forget The Who, good band though they were; these boys were the epitome of what Mod stood for, the sharp clothes, the cool, the drugs and most importantly the music.

These themes are constantly apparent throughout their work, for example the overt drug references in The Universal and Here Comes The Nice are hilarious when you think of how they went largely unnoticed in the 60s - when singer Steve Marriott croons "He knows what I want, he's got what I need, he's always there when I need some speed" about his dealer, you can't help but smile.
There's what seems like a million brilliant tunes here, most of them Steve Marriott and bassist Ronnie Lane compositions and a few well-chosen covers to boot. Red Balloon and Every Little Bit Hurts are two of the better covers, the latter a soul classic and sung well enough to stop your heart by Marriott, who simply had the best white soul voice of any man before or since. But the covers are footnotes really; when you hear the power of a stomper like Tin Soldier - one of the greatest songs ever written - then you'll know what I mean as it builds to a relentless crescendo with Marriott's voice soaring as he hits the notes with facile ease and Kenney Jones' crashing drums proving that he was every bit as accomplished as his more celebrated contemporary Keith Moon (as a brief aside, isn't it amazing how people equate a rock n' roll lifestyle with talent - Pete Doherty anyone?). Then there's the cock-er-ney music hall pastiche of Happy Days Toy Town and Rene which don't so much give a nod to the band's London roots as run screaming toward then jump on them; Stanley Unwin pops up on these with his inimitable semi-nonsense commentary for an extra surreal feel. You'll think "WTF?" when you hear them, but you 'll also laugh.

You'll be surprised by how many of these you've heard without ever knowing what the songs were actually called; there's the out-and-out rock of Wham Bam Thank You Mam, which sounds hugely familiar even if you haven't heard it before, the folksy tenderness of The Autumn Stone and the Mod anthem Rollin' Over among many others, all of them infused with the soul and nonchalant cool that seemed to come so easily to the Small Faces. In fact, there's only one omission glaring in its absence, the wondrous All Or Nothing, which surely should have been included here at the expense of the Ian MacLagan composition Up The Wooden Hills To Bedfordshire, a song I can only surmise was allowed to be recorded to either stop Ian going in the cream puff or because it sounded a lot better on drugs. Could have been both, I suppose.
Regardless, my advice to you is this: buy this, dig it out on a sunny day, get the beers and smoke out, bring your friends round then crank it up enough to make your neighbours stop speaking to you. Sound.

Review from internet

×

The Small Faces - The Essential Collection (2005)

Close

×

The Small Faces - The Essential Collection (2005)

Close

×

The Small Faces - The Essential Collection (2005)

Close