Some albums are recorded over a few months. Making Faces has taken more than forty years.
Although released today, these twenty-two songs were born across a remarkable period of creativity stretching from the early 1980s into the beginning of the following decade. Some pre-date The Grid itself, existing first as handwritten lyrics in dog-eared songbooks before finding new life with the band. Others were written during the band's brief but productive years together, while a final handful arrived after the group had gone their separate ways. Together they tell the story not only of a band, but of three young songwriters slowly discovering who they were.
Nick Abear, Steve Speight and Ian Jeffs formed The Grid in 1982, two years after leaving school. Rehearsing in a warehouse owned by Steve's father, they did what countless young bands have always done: they wrote songs, played them as loudly as they could and hoped someone might listen. During the mid-1980s the band independently released two four-track cassettes. Around their local area they became unexpectedly popular. For a while it seemed every passing car was playing them. Magicians, in particular, became something of a local favourite.
The band eventually came to an end in the late 1980s, but the songs never really went away. Some remained tucked inside old notebooks. Others survived on fading cassette recordings. They waited patiently for the opportunity to become what they had always promised to be.
Listening now, what is perhaps most striking is how recognisable the writing already was. Long before Nick's later work explored belonging, loneliness and the lives of ordinary people, those themes were already quietly taking shape. The characters who inhabit these songs are rarely heroes or villains. They are unemployed teenagers searching for a first opportunity, families trying to survive difficult times, people falling in and out of love, dreamers looking for a better future and communities struggling to hold themselves together. Even at eighteen, there was an unmistakable compassion running through the writing.
Rather than simply remastering old recordings, these songs have been carefully revisited, rearranged and re-recorded with the benefit of four decades of experience. Importantly, they have not been rewritten. The young men who first wrote them are still here. The optimism and the honesty remains. What has changed is that the songs have finally been given the production, musicianship and confidence they always deserved.
The title Making Faces could hardly be more fitting. This is an album populated by people. Lovers, outsiders, workers, neighbours, forgotten voices and hopeful teenagers all pass through its four sides. Every face carries its own story. Every song quietly asks us to look beyond first impressions.
There is something unexpectedly moving about hearing these songs today. Not because they are old, but because they never stopped being relevant. They speak of growing up in suburban Britain during the 1980s, in a world shaped by unemployment, uncertainty and changing communities, yet the questions they ask remain timeless. How do we find our place? How do we hold on to hope? And how do we stay kind in a world that often makes that difficult?
Making Faces is more than a collection of songs. It is the sound of unfinished conversations finally being completed. Forty years later, these songs have come home.