110. The Kinks - The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society (November 1968)

1. The Village Green Preservation Society*

2. Do You Remember Walter

3. Picture Book*

4. Johnny Thunder

5. 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 of My Friends Were There

13. Wicked Annabella

14. Monica

15. People Take Pictures of Each Other*

A

This is an interesting album. There's nothing here of the quality of "Shangri-La" or "Waterloo Sunset" (although the title track comes close), but this is made up for by TKATVGPS being a remarkably consistent album. Ray Davies took over production for this album, and the result is a far cleaner and more polished sound than on previous Kinks records - you might even call it understated. Musically, it's a sort of muscular rock/pop/folk hybrid, with flourishes of psychedelia here and there (the largely mediocre "Last of the Steam-Powered Trains", for example, launches halfway through into an incredible guitar breakdown). This is a pretty, gentle album. Davies is still a smart-arse, but his lyrics are more nostalgic and introspective than before. The concept for this album was the idea that "Englishness" was fading, with the influence of America in particular coming to dominate the culture. As an Australian, I can certainly understand the anxiety that comes from watching your country gradually turn American - although, if I'm being honest, there are a lot of aspects of traditional Australian culture that could stand to go. And Davies isn't some racist conservative - as he sings in the title track, "Preserving the old ways from being abused/ Protecting the new ways for me and you/ What more can we do?".

As I get older, I both find myself getting seduced by nostalgia and growing more and more suspicious of it. This album is something of an antidote for that - Davies seems to feel that same mixture of reverence and distaste for his culture and his country. I think this was best explored in the brilliant "Victoria", but he does a good job here. Of course, this sort of lyrical, nostalgic approach was completely at odds with the times, and the album sank without a trace, only to be rescued years later by the Indie crowd (who would mine this album's sound mercilessly throughout the 90s). And it seems obvious to me that acts like the Beatles were still taking notice, and that David Bowie's early 70s work owes a massive debt to the Kinks. 

So, there are a few tracks here that manage to stand with the best of the Kinks' pop songs - "Picture Book" and "The Village Green Preservation Society" are gorgeous sing-along classics, for example - and the rest of the album is good in a sort of gentle, whimsical way (well, except for the freak-out that is "Wicked Annabella"). I'm probably in the minority in preferring Something Else..., but so what. This is a lovely album. And the actual sound of it is just massively influential.

109. The Incredible String Band - The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter (March 1968)

1. Kooeeoaddi There*

2. The Minotaur's Song*

3. Witch's Hat

4. A Very Cellular Song*

5. Mercy I Cry City

6. Waltz of the New Moon

7. The Water Song

8. Three Is a Green Crown

9. Swift As the Wind

10. Nightfall

A

I can't help but imagine this album being rather polarising. Either you'll think it's a genius work of psychedelic folk and world music, or that it's a formless bundle of noise. I tend towards the former view, although even though I love side one of this album, I admit that by the time the album as a whole is finished I've definitely had enough.

It's kind of impossible to describe the sound of The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter (incidentally - what a great title). The really clever thing about it is that the Incredible String Band manage to draw from so many different styles of music, find the commonalities between them, and work their vast range of influences into a cohesive whole. So, in the course of one song, you'll hear snatches of Celtic folk, Mediaeval balladry, nursery rhymes, Indian classical, North African singing, rock music, and Bob Dylan. "The Minotaur's Song" is a musical hall number in which the titular beast lives in a labyrinth under the sea and grinds bones for his porridge, complete with call and response vocals. "Kooeeoaddi There" is a beautiful, wandering evocation of childhood. "A Very Cellular Song" mixes Caribbean spirituals, baroque harpsichords and Middle Eastern-style vocals to tell a complex epic about faith that at one point detours into a segment sung from the perspective of an amoeba.

Suffice it to say that this album is the last word in hippie nonsense. But it's the kind of hippie nonsense I like, with wide-eyed spiritualism and loose, strange music and a quintessentially British obsession with surreal fantasy, childhood, and nonsense verse. Eastern Mysticism 101 by way of Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. And musically, it really is great. Mike Heron and Robin Williamson aren't really the world's greatest singers or musicians, but they make up in versatility what they lack in skill. Their slightly rough approach also gives the album an earthy, mysterious and, for lack of a better word, "real" quality that conjures up (for me, anyway) memories of childhoods spent wandering through rainy paddocks, exploring the properties on which my grandparents lived. I think a large part of my weakness for this sort of thing comes from 1) having an English mother, and by extension spending a lot of time around my English grandparents with their comical Mancunian accents, and 2) spending a lot of my childhood living in the country, where we were forced to go play outside, and dividing my time between doing as such and reading a lot of fantasy novels. Throw in a small but consistent interest in philosophy and Eastern spiritualism, and I'm very much this album's target audience.

I would suggest, I suppose, that if you're unsure about this album you just listen to "A Very Cellular Song". It's a world in miniature, really quite beautiful, and as the strangest song on the album probably a good indicator for whether you'll like the album as a whole. I personally really enjoyed the whole thing, and will probably seek out more of the Incredible String Band's music.