Review:

on 2012-07-21 CharlesMartel Said:

The album that Ray Davies once described as the most successful flop of all time had a strange genesis. The songs were written over a period of three years before its release and the original idea was for it to be a solo album by Ray Davies who was growing tired of the constant pressure by the record company to write commercial singles. The strange ban the Kinks received from the US authorities (well they had to ban SOMEONE in order to show their home grown musicians that they were standing up to the British invasion) had also cut off Davies songwriting from the same influences which manifested themselves in other British acts of the period. When the album was finally recorded as a Kinks album, Davies changed the track listings and added three tracks just before its release. The resultant album had a cover with a multitude of typos ("Phenominil Cat") when it was released on an unsuspecting and sceptical British public.

The result was instantaneous derision. Nobody understood it. Pye, the record label, were horrified at the lack of possible singles, and the music press wrote it off and prophesied it as the end of the Kinks as a musical force. So what happened? How come this bastard child has now come to be regarded as the best ever Kinks album and one of the best albums of the sixties?

Well, first off you have to listen to it. It doesnt take long before you realise that "The Village Green Preservation Society" is way ahead of its time. What shines through is the sardonic Ray Davies wit in the songwriting. Davies set out to write an album which was not commercial; an album which, like the magnificent "Waterloo Sunset", was British to the point of being almost a parody, and yet at the same time reflecting Davies's fondness for the rural environment in which he grew up. And so, as only Davies could write them, the lyrics to the title track, the opening track, set out the stall for the rest of the album -

"We are the office block persecution affinity,
God save little shops, china cups and virginity
We are the skyscraper condemnation affiliate
God save tudor houses, antique tables and billiards"

The album then unforlds into characters and situations which any British resident would recognise as being half a truth, and any foreigner would assume was how the British saw themselves. "The Village Green" describes a place so damn quaint that American tourists visit it and marvel at it. "Phenomenal Cat" is a bizarre creature straight out of a nursery rhyme or a Lewis Carroll story where the cat embarks on a journey to the east and ends up eating itself (a metaphor for sixties popular music, setting out for the fabled west of America and destroying itself in the process). The there is "The Last of the Steam Powered Trains", an anachronism but one which carefully describes contemporary musicians, always looking backwards, never forwards. And then there is Walter. Walter was once your best friend, but you lost touch long ago. Now you imagine walter as he may be now 
"I bet your fat and bald and always in bed by half past eight."

And I could go on - Annabella, Monica and the people who take pictures of each other.

The Kinks were not just making an album. They were making a statement. This album marks a milestone in the terminal decline of the lingering post-war optimism that still hung around British society. In America, the same reaction took the form of hippies and free love. But the Kinks were more realistic. Instead of burying themselves in fantasy, Davies's songwriting set forth a realism which proved strikingly accurate. Lyrically, this album is the precursor of all those bands who commented, often with strong political overtones, on their society. If you want to know where the Chameleons, the Specials, Billy Bragg, the Smiths, Blur, the Enemy and hundreds if not thousands of other bands to this day got their inspiration from, look no further than "The Village Green Preservation Society". To anyone who claims that "Sgt Peppers' Lonely Hearts Club Band" is the most influential album of the sixties, I would recommend they listen to this and then reconsider.

The album I have is a 2008 re-release, a deluxe whopper of an album spread over three CDs and 62 tracks. It contains the full stereo and mono versions of the original album, plus stereo and mono versions of the tracks which were dropped from the original twelve-track version. Then there are a number of off-cuts, instrumentals and remixes which, in many ways, show just how far the Kinks were ahead of everybody else at the time. The great thing is that, while other albums of this period sometimes seem dated, "The Village Green Preservation Society" is as fresh and modern as anything coming out today.

Rating: 9/10

on 2008-02-22 Bushywebb Said:

I would recommend listening to this (or any of Davies' solo work) to hear what a song writer can do. Always imaginative, even when covering pretty standard subjects, his imagination and vision always create memorable chunks of music. This album is one of my personal favourites
Rating: 9/10