re: The MB Album Listening Project

The album I listened to first was Small Faces - Ogden's Nut Gone Flake

-It's a little dated, like a lot of stuff from the mid-late 60's that didn't have touch notch production equipment (see: Beatles) sounds like this. I noticed a big thing with the album is the mixing of instruments, really like intentionally mixed in strange ways. Lots of stuff only coming from one side, kind of different.

-The first track sounds a lot like Tame Impala. I love the strings on it. I love strings in anything really.

-The sound mixing on Afterglow was a good example of this. Singing just from the left side, instruments from the right, except for the beginning and end parts of the song. Pretty interesting.

- I love the fake fade out towards the end of track 3, when it comes back again to jam it out.

-Track 4 (Rene) is pretty catchy, and I love the Cockney accent (which they do again later on Lazy Sunday Afternoon). Like a English pub drunken sing-a-long. Reminds me a little bit of the Kinks on this one. This is probably my favorite song.

-The middle section of Lazy Sunday reminded me of some spacy prog interludes. Cool stuff.

-As often with mid to late 60's music, I find little interest in the lyrics of most songs. Whimsical little slices of English life don't do much for me. The Kinks are a rare exception. This album doesn't do anything for my lyrically, but thats pretty typical of most of these types of albums. Lots of stuff about love and rainbows and sunshine. No thanks. It's more about the music itself anyway.

-I gathered there was some sort of narrated story going on in the second half of the album, but I couldn't really get to into it in only 2.5 listens. Something about a dude named Stan going on some sort of adventure and flys and stuff. The narrartor talks really fast and in a thick British accent, it was hard to pick up a lot. As a prog fan, I'll all about it. I'll pick it up more on further listens.

-The songs themselves are ok, but the musical interludes of this album are where it's at. Track 10 (The Journey) jammed out and got a little out there. Very prog-ish.

-I wish they had divided songs to just narration, and regular songs. Also I thought the first half (which wasn't narrated) was stronger than the second.

-All in all a solid album, I'd say a solid B, maybe B- because it's got a few problems with it (it's pretty fricking English, like really really fricking English. I get why they didn't make it big in America), and because I like to hate on music from the 60's whenever possible.

Best tracks:

Ogden's Nut Gone Flake, Rene, The Journey