The
Small Faces: Under Review
Picture: C+
Sound: C+ Extras: C- Program: B
Get your parka on and rev up your Vespa. Don’t forget to pocket that copy of Scooter
Girl and hurry up coz the dance party’s already started. It’s Northern Soul night don’t you know and
the DJ digs himself some Steve Mariott.
That would be my voice over to any ads for Under
Review’s latest installment in which our intrepid heroes, British rock
journalists all, bravely explore the oft-forgotten and entirely underrated
records made by The Small Faces. In
their time The Small Faces were considered on a par with The Kinks and
The Who, but history hasn’t been nearly as kind to them as to their British
Invasion brethren.
Much more of a down’n’dirty soul band, The Small Faces
were ill-suited for the teenybop radio market that their management tried to
squeeze them into. Though this method
of programmatic pop landed them with their big hit Sha-La-La-La-Lee such
appeals to thirteen-year-old girls and their budding sexuality rankled the
band. The Small Faces preferred
old-school Solomon Burke and laced their best records with that same fiery
gospel passion.
The Small Faces changed their sound during the Summer of
Love and due to Marriott’s head full of acid the imagery to their songs got
weirder and their arrangements became denser.
Piling on sound effects, odd instrumentation, and recording breaks
backwards gave the music a new trippy feel.
The most famous record resulting from this new phase was Itchycoo
Park with its notorious cal and response chorus of “I got high!” which somehow slid past the ears of the BBC censors.
Once again the assembled critics ably provide
contextualization for the band under review.
The picture and Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo sound are just above average as
the Queen and Syd Barrett installments (both reviewed elsewhere on this site)
were. This is a fine series and worth
the time and consideration of fans new and old.
- Kristofer
Collins
Kristofer Collins is an editor at The New Yinzer and the
owner of Desolation Row CDs in Pittsburgh, PA.
Visit Desolation Row at www.myspace.com/desolationrowcds
for more.
