Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 19/06/06
Label: Castle

Nearly 40 years on, the Small Faces 1968 opus / swansong remains important for a number of reasons. First, as a cultural barometer. Along with "Sergeant Pepper", The Stone's "Their Satanic Majesties Request", The Who's "Sell Out" and the Pretty Things' "S.F Sorrow Is Gone", "Ogden's..." marks perfectly the point where the "Swinging Sixties" skirted the edge of a peculiarly English brand of "Flower Power". It was a proto-concept album in an age of glorious possibilities - a silly acid and marijuana-fuelled trip through this green and pleasant land. Cricket and tea meets LSD and wacky baccy.

With the Fab Four's "Revolver" and The Kink's "Village Green Preservation Society", it was also a Rosetta Stone for Britpop. In fact, moving as it does from searing hard rock to humorous Mockney sing-a-longs, "Ogden's…" was probably the ultimate Britpop album - influencing each end of the spectrum, from Oasis' "Slide Away" to Blur's "Parklife". In Pete Doherty's romanticized notion of Arcadia, its echoes remain. In 2006, "Ogden's…" remains a rewarding, if frequently frustrating experience.

Held together by the running narration of old-time comedian Stanley Unwin, it is essentially the journey to enlightenment of one 'Happiness Stan' - concluding with the knees-up jollity of "Happy Days Toy Town" (with it's "Life is just a bowl of All Bran" terrace chant) via flirtations with musical hall ("Rene", "Lazy Sunday"), spaced-out instrumentals (the title track), daft folk ("Mad John", "The Hungry Intruder") and a series of throat-shredding guitar anthems ("Afterglow", "Rollin' Over", "Song Of A Baker"). Steve Marriott's theatrical roots (he famously played Oliver in one of Lionel Bart's stage productions) are never far from the surface and aside from Unwin's eccentric English tones, the whole shebang teeters on the edge of collapse.

However, the highs are still pretty high. When Marriott and cohorts, Ronnie Lane, Kenny Jones and Ian McLagan hit the chorus to "Afterglow" in unison, they sound as powerful as The Who and as soulful as any British band of the era. Marriott was never quite so beautiful again - the fragmented jigsaw of ideas coming momentarily into place and resulting in a rock song of enduring passion and blood, sweat and tears. Beyond the comic cock-er-ney-isms (and you can certainly imagine button-suited gentlemen doing the "Lambeth Walk" to "Lazy Sunday") such moments of clarity are something to behold.

Whether listeners can abide Unwin's spoonerisms is another matter entirely. Quite amusing the first time round, and especially after the first toke, they soon become an irritating distraction. A silencer function (a bit like what the BBC are currently offering football fans who hate John Motson) would have been a welcome edition to this deluxe edition - which instead offers a nice tin box, an extra disc of mono-mixes and a making-of-the-album DVD. The tin and mono mixes you can take or leave (probably the latter) but the DVD is actually a pretty fascinating document and well worth the price of admission alone.

    by Adam Webb