Review Summary: Pastoral and vaudevillian, "Village Green" represents both the genius and the inaccessibility of Kinks' marvelous music.
Some albums are pretty hard to love. Kinks’ works stand in this category. While they are magnificently arranged works of art, their sources of inspiration prove to be remotely accessible to the classic rock or alternative listener due to their music hall-based approach. Furthermore, some listeners complain about Ray Davies’ singing style, and it is obvious why: at first glance, he sounds as if he doesn’t care for his vocal delivery. More suitable for the vaudeville public, Kinks’ music certainly doesn’t fit every listener. Also, their albums aren’t founded on the feeling of consistency that transpired from the Rolling Stones, Beatles, or Who’s records, being merely the vehicles for a cabaret-inspired parade of conservative hymns and inoffensive satire.
Even if they succeeded in reaching commercial heights with "You Really Got Me", their debut’s centerpiece, Kinks failed to deliver something as catchy as that single, and the late sixties efforts sound detached from the tumultuous times. Instead, the group chose to focus on English satire and parody, delivering a suite of works of art that ignores the mark of 1960s popular music. This total breakage from the rules began with the masterwork "Something Else" and reached its highest conceptual peak with the follow-up, "The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society", a release that summed up their artistic aspiration and their musical attitude, a record that again made widely known that the Kinks were playing "something else", something wonderful indeed.
Composed of fifteen songs, "Village Green" evokes a pastoral sound that was missing from the 1960s musical scene. It sketches vibrant images of country landscapes and childhood memories, surrounded by the feeling of nostalgia, an element that gives the entire album a definitive poetic allure. Beginning with the title track, the Kinks seem more accessible and have more melodic nuances than on the previous album. The song is a love letter to traditional values, an enumeration of Victorian-era themes, that marks the character of nostalgia for an era that wasn’t experienced by any of the band’s members but was imagined through music and constructed with a vigorous palette of sound impressions. The calm harmonies are widely suggestive of the old-time feeling emanated, immediately catching the listener in a charming web of false, but blissful, nostalgia.
Proving that the satiric spirit hasn’t vanished a bit, the rest of the album sounds like the construction of an asymmetric puzzle, totally opposed to the harmonic aspect of the introduction. The sound feels dissipated, with a loose thread creating a strange connection between the moments. Even the lyrics contrast, and the final impression suggests that we listened to not only an album by the Kinks but to a whole spectacle of the band’s musical and lyrical sensibilities, which tend to leave the listener confused after the drawing of the curtains.
In the end, the album tells us: "Take it or leave it; we do what we like, and we’re pleased with the exquisite public that we have". It’s no wonder that the record failed to chart and was classified as a commercial fiasco. Without any song to have the allure of a single, "Village Green" remained until recently a strong example of wasted beauty, a work in which the genius spots and the fillers are almost undistinguishable, an amalgam of minor musical nuances mixed with an overall impression of uncertainty. What Kinks were doing with this small album in the psychedelic era was a mystery for the first generation of listeners, but today the work seems more accessible because now we are accustomed to the idea that music doesn’t need to be serious to be taken seriously. So, "Village Green" benefited from a new recognition from the new listeners, a destiny that is deserved by many records from the Kinks’ catalog that aren’t regarded at their real value.
If we listen to the album today, we feel the grass flavor, the hay dust, and the simple joy of a simple life. Although it can still be hard for music listeners to get into the album’s mood and its almost surrealist humor, "Village Green" remains that kind of work that pays off after many spins and benefits from its unique rhythm. A wondrous memory evoked by a secluded country lake...
