Where once The Kinks were a perfect barometer of their times – the beat-boom urgency of You Really Got Me and tongue-incheek Carnaby Street dandyism of Dedicated Follower Of Fashion – their sixth album in just four years found the band, and most pertinently, songwriter Ray Davies, resolutely out of step with the zeitgeist.
The political turmoil of 1968, mirrored in The Rolling Stones’ Jumpin’ Jack Flash and Street Fighting Man, as well as The Beatles’ late entry into activism with the visceral Revolution, was nowhere to be found on The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society. Or at least not on a surface level.