66. The Kinks - Face to Face (October 1966)

1. Party Line

2. Rosy Won't You Please Come Home*

3. Dandy

4. Too Much on My Mind

5. Session Man

6. Rainy Day in June

7. A House in the Country

8. Holiday in Waikiki

9. Most Exclusive Residence for Sale

10. Fancy

11. Little Miss Queen of Darkness*

12. You're Lookin' Fine

13. Sunny Afternoon*

14. I'll Remember

A-

And so we come to the Kinks, a band of which I've long been fond even though I've only heard a couple of their albums. If you come to this expecting "You Really Got Me" or "All Day and All of the Night" you'll be pretty disappointed. This album marks the point where they dropped the fast, heavy beat style for which they still remain famous and adopted a softer, smarter approach to song writing. Ray Davies emerges on this album as one of the finest lyricists of his generation, writing a collection of bitingly satirical songs about everything from the upper classes to the commercialisation of Hawaii to girls who go to discotheques. The album cover is really pretty misleading (and apparently the band opposed it). From the cover you'd expect a bunch of out-there psychedelic pop, but that's really only true of "Fancy" and "Rainy Day in June", both of which are decent songs but feel deeply out of place on this album, which is mostly humorous and literate rock.

And really, I think the Kinks would have to be one of the most consistently funny bands of all time. Ray Davies is a master at wry, observational humour, and not afraid to go dark when need be ("House in the Country" features the lyric "he got his job when drunken daddy tumbled down the stairs"), although he also shows a remarkable tenderness at times. And the band are all great musicians, playing straight rock like "I'll Remember" or "Party Line", but also getting sophisticated with stuff like the gorgeous and hilarious "Sunny Afternoon".

The argument that this is a concept album, though, doesn't really hold water. Supposedly it's a song cycle about British society, which is all well and good. But then how do you explain the inclusion of "Too Much on My Mind", which is about nervous exhaustion? "Rainy Day in June" is about elves and gnomes, although I suppose it could be commentary on English weather. And "Fancy" is a gorgeous bit of Indian-influenced psychedelia but hardly biting satire. So I don't know. 

In any case, this is a great album. It's not the Kinks' high point, but it shows how they were going to develop into one of the greatest bands of all time. As I understand it, the decision to go soft and smart resulted in a drop in sales but a massive improvement in their critical profile. And really, we haven't had anything like this before on the List. This satirical, documentary approach to song writing is completely new within the parameters of the Book. It's certainly welcome, as I've long since grown tired of all the love songs, and Bob Dylan wandered up his own arse about halfway through Highway 61 Revisited, never to emerge. Songs that tell stories, and make clever observations, are some of my favourite types, and I'm looking forward to the shift in music that occurred around this time.