5 March : First Step

Hot on the heels of Rod Stewart’s debut solo album comes the first Faces album. It’s a very different beast, featuring a number of strong characters. Ronnie Wood and Ian Mclagan provide some continuity but Ronnie Lane is now in the mix as well.

It’s strange to listen to this now because the Faces as we know and love them haven’t yet emerged. The album is something of a mixed bag, with 9 originals by band members and a Dylan cover, and one of the originals, Ronnie Lane’s Stone (with Rod Stewart on banjo), wears its Dylan influences front and centre, not least in Lane’s delivery. It’s a good song, the best one on the album, but it’s so much a Ronnie Lane song that it sits oddly on a Faces LP.

Of the other songs, most are at least good, although Around the Plynth with its irritating slide guitar panning around the mix overstays it’s welcome by a long way. Shake Shudder Shiver wouldn’t be distinguishable from any number of other bands were it not for Stewart’s voice. Looking Out The Window, an instrumental written by Jones and McLagan underpinned by Lane’s fine bass playing is good, but it’s let down by the lead guitar which doesn’t really go anywhere.

It’s only really on Three Button Hand Me Down that we hear the classic Faces sound coming into being.

The playing is solid throughout, but I couldn’t escape the feeling that I was listening to a bunch of Londoners playing at being American. As always, your mileage may vary.

It’s all on Spotify and also YouTube as a playlist.