Ogden's Nut Gone Flake (UK)

Uncut - 5 stars out of 5 - "...[An] unequivocal Sixties classic..." Rolling Stone - "...the brightest and craziest rock in too long of a time....Both sides of OGDEN magically transport the listener to equally worriless and problemless places....Everybody owes it to themselves to get this record and be refreshed...." Uncut - 5 stars out of 5 - "...[An] unequivocal Sixties classic..." Q - Ranked #59 in Q's "100 Greatest British Albums" - "...Totally braking...their third and final album. The 2nd side is where things get seriously weird: a loose song cycle about 'Happiness Stan' and his search for themissing half of the moon..." Rolling Stone - "...the brightest and craziest rock in too long of a time....Both sides of OGDEN magically transport the listener to equally worriless and problemless places....Everybody owes it to themselves to get this record and be refreshed...." Rolling Stone - "...the brightest and craziest rock in too long of a time....Both sides of OGDEN magically transport the listener to equally worriless and problemless places....Everybody owes it to themselves to get this record and be refreshed...." Uncut - 5 stars out of 5 - "...[An] unequivocal Sixties classic..." Q - Ranked #59 in Q's "100 Greatest British Albums" - "...Totally braking...their third and final album. The 2nd side is where things get seriously weird: a loose song cycle about 'Happiness Stan' and his search for themissing half of the moon..." Q - Ranked #59 in Q's "100 Greatest British Albums" - "...Totally braking...their third and final album. The 2nd side is where things get seriously weird: a loose song cycle about 'Happiness Stan' and his search for themissing half of the moon..." Q - Ranked #59 in Q's "100 Greatest British Albums" - "...Totally braking...their third and final album. The 2nd side is where things get seriously weird: a loose song cycle about 'Happiness Stan' and his search for themissing half of the moon..." Rolling Stone - "...the brightest and craziest rock in too long of a time....Both sides of OGDEN magically transport the listener to equally worriless and problemless places....Everybody owes it to themselves to get this record and be refreshed...." Uncut - 5 stars out of 5 - "...[An] unequivocal Sixties classic..." Q - 3 stars out of 5 -- "[With a] curious mix of frivolity and sincerity..." Uncut - "OGDENS' is a deceptively soulful, searching record. The voguish surrealism and theatricality is plugged into earthy humanity."

There was no shortage of good psychedelic albums emerging from England in 1967-1968, but Ogden's Nut Gone Flake is special even within their ranks. The Small Faces had already shown a surprising adaptability to psychedelia with the single "Itchycoo Park" and much of their other 1967 output, but Ogden's Nut Gone Flake pretty much ripped the envelope. British bands had an unusual approach to psychedelia from the get-go, often preferring to assume different musical "personae" on their albums, either feigning actual "roles" in the context of a variety show (as on the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album), or simply as storytellers in the manner of the Pretty Things on S.F. Sorrow, or actor/performers as on the Who's Tommy. The Small Faces tried a little bit of all of these approaches on Ogden's Nut Gone Flake, but they never softened their sound. Side one's material, in particular, would not have been out of place on any other Small Faces release -- "Afterglow (Of Your Love)" and "Rene" both have a pounding beat from Kenny Jones, and Ian McLagan's surging organ drives the former while his economical piano accompaniment embellishes the latter; and Steve Marriott's crunching guitar highlights "Song of a Baker." Marriott singing has him assuming two distinct "roles," neither unfamiliar -- the Cockney upstart on "Rene" and "Lazy Sunday," and the diminutive soul shouter on "Afterglow (Of Your Love)" and "Song of a Baker." Some of side two's production is more elaborate, with overdubbed harps and light orchestration here and there, and an array of more ambitious songs, all linked by a narration by comic dialect expert Stanley Unwin, about a character called "Happiness Stan." The core of the sound, however, is found in the pounding "Rollin' Over," which became a highlight of the group's stage act during its final days -- the song seems lean and mean with a mix in which Ronnie Lane's bass is louder than the overdubbed horns. Even "Mad John," which derives from folk influences, has a refreshingly muscular sound on its acoustic instruments. Overall, this was the ballsiest-sounding piece of full-length psychedelia to come out of England, and it rode the number one spot on the U.K. charts for six weeks in 1968, though not without some controversy surrounding advertisements by Immediate Records that parodied the Lord's Prayer. Still, Ogden's was the group's crowning achievement -- it had even been Marriott's hope to do a stage presentation of Ogden's Nut Gone Flake, though a television special might've been more in order. As with most Immediate Records releases, it has gone through multiple reissue cycles on vinyl and CD; the original LP came in a circular sleeve in keeping with the design of the cover, and was reissued in a more convention jacket during the 1970s and early '80s. Most of the CD versions until the 1990s were, in keeping with the poor state of the Immediate Records tape library, substandard in sound, but since 1994 or so there has been a succession of good-sounding digital remasterings. [This edition of the album adds 14 bonus tracks taken from singles and the vaults. It doesn't include anything unavailable elsewhere and the sheer number of added tracks serves to blunt the impact of the original album.] ~ Bruce Eder|