Small Faces: There Are But Four Small Faces [CHARLY]

Why you'll love it

This 180g Charly reissue presents the stereo album with a printed inner sleeve of liner notes. It gathers three 1967 hit singles that British fans bought on 45, alongside songs from the band's Immediate album of the same year.

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Stereo
• Printed inner sleeve with liner notes
• Lyrics included

About the album

Steve Marriott, Ronnie Lane, Kenney Jones and Ian McLagan started out as the sharpest mods in London, all R&B grit and tight trousers. By 1967 they had moved to the Immediate label and turned psychedelic, and this American album collects the best of that change of direction. Immediate put it out in the US in March 1968, mixing the hit singles with a selection of tracks from the British LP.

"Itchycoo Park" floats along on its phased drums and singalong chorus, "Tin Soldier" is Marriott at full soul shout, and "Here Come the Nice" is a cheeky slice of pop. Marriott and Lane wrote most of it and produced, McLagan contributes "Up the Wooden Hills to Bedfordshire" and "I Feel Much Better," and "Green Circles" drifts somewhere wonderfully hazy.

The band later became Faces with Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood, and in 2012 both line-ups entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame together. Up the wooden hills to Bedfordshire, for those outside the UK, is what your gran says at bedtime, and it remains the most English song title in the shop.

Also at Kops: more Small Faces on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Immediate / Charly (cat# IMLP 52002), a reissue of the 1968 album.