#282 The Small Faces - Ogden's Nut Gone Flake

Not making the same mistake again - following up on the other well-regarded Small Faces album.

Man, what a weird album, and again, I kind of can't believe I've never heard of it. Though, to be fair, this one smells more like a cult classic than a classic-classic. The first side is all experimental, vaguely garagey, highly unpredictable stompers and swervers, each catchy, and each responding to its zig points with 30% zags - just enough to keep you on your toes. Its anthemic and pop and catchy, but its also full of starts, stops, structural turns, late resolutions (musically and lyrically), and a bevy of production tricks and stereo maneuvers. And, yeah, it just straight up rocks at places.

The second side is something unto itself. A narrative concept album, complete with the most madcap narration I've ever heard, delivered in a dialect bent at right angles at all the offbeats, pretzeled into knobly lumps in some hyperbritish fasion. The songs themselves continue to be great, though that narration does kind of get in the way. I'm not wholly sure what to make of it. The closest comparison point is The Who Sell Out, with the mix of catchiness and inanity that all kind of swirl and unbalance.

I would argue, at very least, this is a must hear. Its up there with Oracle and Odyssey, Village Green Preservation Society, and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway level pantheon of great British albums that nobody in America (and maybe not so many people in England?) know about. This isn't quite as good as those albums, but I sense that its even less well-known. It's probably not even as good as the Small Faces' previous album* but its probably more of an achievement. I felt immediately afterwards like I had had my mind expanded, maybe even blown, and that's pretty cool 4.5/5

* At least in the American form I listened to, that album was a complicated release situation with myriad versions and overlap therebetween.