If you ever wished to go about identifying an alternative Rock and Roll canon, The Kinks would be pretty much near the top of the whole damned list. Immediate contemporaries of The Beatles, The Stones and The Who, their songs and albums have a strong claim to being as good as any of them, but they never seem to get the full share of sustained attention they so plainly deserve.
The reason for this is never completely clear, but it seems to me that part of it is that their method of attack was consistently different from the other three. The Beatles, Stones and Who were all adept at wry social comment, but after their initial rockers Really Got Me and All Day and All of the Night, Ray Davies and The Kinks made thisway of looking at life their primary mode of operation. They stood at the sidelines. On the edge of the pitch while Beatles, Stones and Who all preferred to be on the field in the thick of things.
Kinks and Ray are mostly satirists but that's no lower artform than Romanticism, Boidce Rippers, Horror or Action, the styles The Beatles, Stones and Who specialised in. They were never particularly sexy, never wrote about love or war much. Their approach was generally observational, detached. Perhaps they told the story of those not invited to the Sixties party best of anyone.
They did several essential studio albums. I'm writing ostensibly about Something Else by The Kinks but I could just as easily choose Face to Face, The Village Green Preservation, or Muswell Hillbillies. They're all perfectly craftled short story collections about life lived in London, its surrounding suburbia and the coastal towns. Now, just as well as then. They don't date.
There's a sadness to some of these songs. Just listen to Two Sisters and Harry Rag about family strife and nicotine dependency successively. Most of all the record is permeated by resignation to the fate that life allots you to and a determination to enjoy it as much as you can regardless. Because it's all we've got.
There's not a weak track on Something Else. Ray Davies was a master. Young at the time but essentially an Old Master, with wisdom far in advance of his years. Dave chipped in too when required. Like The Beatles in particular they had a particular fascination with the past. With family get togethers and sing alongs. Community and shared values.
There are thirteen songs on Something Else. It begins with David Watts and ends with Waterloo Sunset. What more could you want. In between are songs about scrimping and saving to get by, trying to make relationships work, drinking tea in dreary caffs, afternoons dreaming of escape and finding it sometimes.
Goodness knows what America made of them from this point on. They never translated quite as well as the Beatles, Stomes or Who. There was a particularly North European stoic miserabilism about them. Living in a place where the sun rarely shone and was never that warm, even when it did.
It doesn't get much better than this. It's honest, pared down, kitchen sink films transposed into three minute pop songs. The Kinks described a certain class, from a certain part of the country, their cares, fears and small joys as well as anyone ever has.
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