The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society

For a long time one of the most overlooked albums of the 60s, this came in the middle of a run of great albums by the Kinks - Face To Face and Something Else By The Kinks preceded it, and Arthur, Or The Decline And Fall Of The British Empire followed.

The album was not a great success when it came out, and was not helped by a lack of singles (the current reissue, on Castle, has the contemporaneous single Days as a bonus track), but its reputation has grown considerably in recent years. Gentle, nostalgic, and yearning for the simplicities of a bygone age that probably never existed, Ray Davies' songwriting has never been better, absorbing everything worth having from English psychedelia while remaining absolutely timeless and rooted in reality.

Tracklisting:

1. Village Green Preservation Society
2. Do You Remember Walter
3. Picture Book
4. Johnny Thunder
5. The Last Of The Steam Powered Trains
6. Big Sky
7. Sitting By The Riverside
8. Animal Farm
9. Village Green
10. Starstruck
11. Phenomenal Cat
12. All My Friends Were There
13. Wicked Anabella
14. Monica
15. People Take Pictures Of Each Other