Customer Reviews: Read 33 more reviews...
 Take it to the sky! March 23, 2006
Elizabeth C. Jones (Chapel Hill, NC United States)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Simply the best.
I first bought "Faces" on 8-track to listen to in my Datsun B-210 hatchback. Back in the day, Jefferson-Pilot TV Sports liked EWF, and used their songs several times as bumper music for ACC basketball games, including the opening bars of "And Love Goes On." EWF's peppy songs set a high energy mood, and at the other end of the scale there's no substitute for one of Philip Bailey's smooth ballads.
It's the only EWF album (that I can see) that's not available at iTunes. That's so wrong.
The timing of this LP was terrible. In 1980, disco was a dirty word. And because EWF had so successfully mastered the form, critics (and Columbia) made up their minds they weren't going to push this one; it was bound to be just more disco. I don't think some of the critics even listened to it.
"Faces" is a song cycle, and it all works. . . you groove, you chill, you boogie and then head into the quiet storm. You're in the hands of the masters the whole time and it's a sweet ride.
Needs to be on iTunes! No EWF collection is complete without it.
Faces, Races, Places oooweya hey yeaaaaa! August 30, 2004
Bryan (DFW)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Man this album rocks. I love the ballads, You and You Went Away. I also really dig the intro of And Love Goes On. I recently discovered this album just a few years ago but I have never heard any song played from it on the radio. Such good songs and how sad the record company didn't step up to the promotions. EWF is one heck of a band..you don't see stuff like this today i tell ya.
Vintage EWF.... Elements of Pure Gold February 27, 2006
Jerry G. Guevara (San Jose, CA)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
This album was grotesquely underrated and overlooked for it's political and vintage EWF sound. Listen and it is a beautifully creative and one of their most enjoyable album. EWF and Maurice at its finest hour. Instead of being bullied into music they didn't want to put out, they continued the mastering of that strong, elevated and uplifted music. You name one band and I mean any band Black or White where ever song is of great quality and strength. Knocked for perfection...Knocked for humanity...Knocked because R&B was considered Disco. FOOLS I SAY!!!! Buy this album...It's great!!!! 5STARS!!!!!!!
Earth Wind & Fire "Faces" May 16, 2005
New Birth North (Marietta, GA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I love this! My favorites on this project are "Love Goes On" & "Take It To The Sky."
The only other artist I enjoy as much as Earth Wind & Fire, is George Duke! This is a must have!
Faces: An Unrecognized Masterpiece February 17, 2005
Simon W. Cameron (Honiara, Solomon Islands)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
It wasn't until the second time I bought this album, in Singapore, that I really fell in love with it. I listened to it on my Walkman on an SIA flight all the way back to London AND for hours after I'd arrived home, and never tired of it for a second. So why wasn't it the success it should have been?
I think it was because in many ways Faces was a departure from the format that stamped the band as a world class black phenomenon. Not worse-just different, and yet different in a way that might at first incline one to dismiss this album as something of an anticlimax after the mesmeric and meteoric brilliance of the two albums that preceded it. Though, let's "face" it, 'All 'n All' and 'I am' were indeed a hard act to follow.
One of its problems is that on an initial hearing it seems smoochy and limp-wristed. But it grows on you. And indeed, although Faces is also lacking overall in the raunchy funk-edge that tracks like Serpentive Fire, Jupiter and Magic Mind brought to "All 'n All", it more than makes up for this in offering a sound experience that while it's original in the way only EW&F can be, is also very cool and very sexy--even for EW&F--but equally, spiritually uplifting. I'm thinking here especially of 'Song in My Heart' and 'Take it to the Sky'.
With Faces, the band seemed to have finally reached an apotheosis in its drive to find the ideal "world music" blend and balance. It was neither cataclysmic yet dreamy like 'All n All', nor escapist in the way 'I am' was--it was anchored firmly on Planet Earth, and yet had foregone none of its ethereal, other-worldly, ambience that makes EW&F so unique for an African American band.
Ironically, Faces is EW&F at its best, only in a format that takes some adjusting to if you were expecting more of the same after its famous predecessors.
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