A Nod Is as Good as a Wink… to a Blind Horse by The Faces

A Nod Is as Good as a Wink... to a Blind Horse, the Faces' third album and their second of 1971, is the sound of a rowdy bar band catching lightning in a bottle. Rod Stewart had just struck gold on his own with "Maggie May", and with Glyn Johns, an old hand from the Small Faces days, sharing the production, the band trimmed the fat: just over 35 minutes, tight and gloriously loose all at once.

"Stay With Me" is the swaggering centerpiece, Ronnie Wood's guitar leering and Kenney Jones kicking it down the stairs, and it became their biggest US hit. They give Chuck Berry's "Memphis Tennessee" a going-over, and Ronnie Lane steps up to sing three of his own songs, among them the tender "Debris", about fathers and sons. Ian McLagan's keys glue the whole shambles together. It went to No. 2 in the UK and No. 6 in the US, and it's the Faces album critics and fans still rank above the rest.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.