Something Else - The Kinks (1969)

What a great album. The Kinks, in my opinion, are easily the most underrated band of the British invasion, possibly of the entire 60s. When everyone else was singing, "all you need is love," the Kinks were singing, "Sylvilla looked into her mirror / Percilla looked into the washing machine / And the drudgery of being wed / She was so jealous of her sister."

That's from one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard, "Two Sisters." Actually, I should mention here that I always thought it was the drudgery of being wet, which I thought Percilla was associating with the washing machine - but it's wed, which although changes a lot of the meaning, it retains the tone that the Kinks were brilliant at. I love these lyrical misunderstandings; I'm not sure exactly what the literary equivalent would be - I hesitate to say impressionist, in a way, though there's not the aspect of misinterpreting individual words in impressionist poetry - but somebody could write a very good dissertation on this phenomenon.

Something Else came after Face to Face, which I find to be their magnum opus, even better than The Village Green Preservation Society, whose production I always found a bit lackluster compared to the previous two; Face to Face perhaps probably contained more harpsichord on a rock'n'roll record than any other at the time, and probably the most since then. It doesn't at all sound corny or like a pastiche - as a matter of fact, it almost sounds like a brilliantly sly fusion of 18th century pomp and circumstance with 20th century noise. No one did satire like the Kinks, reaffirming my belief that seriousness and humor are never incompatible - and that perhaps no other form communicates "serious" themes quite like humor. (See: Dr. Strangelove). Something Else doesn't quite have the mythic level of songwriting that Face to Face exhibited, but it's damn good. Listen to it.

DOWNLOAD (53 MB - RapidShare)