Kinda Kinks (The Kinks, 1965)

The Kinks were criminally underrepresented last year, with only two appearances in the blog (Village Green Preservation Society and Preservation, Act 1), both of which left out the key early period of the band's history, and in fact both were key albums in distancing the band from those days.
Kinda Kinks, on the other hand, is probably the LP-length album that best represents all of the exuberance of the Shel Talmy-era Kinks, which I've also coined as the "K" era owing to the fact that every word in the first three albums (and most of the EP's) other than the word "the" start with the letter K.

The first album (Kinks) is heavily rooted in the band's early R&B repertoire, with Ray Davies originals competing with cover songs and shady knockoffs written by their business partners, many of which were name-checked in the 1970 song "The Moneygoround". Nicely tucked into the track listing was a song that had already made a huge splash, "You Really Got Me". That song helped the Kinks break free from a Beatles-clone existence, smashing their first two faltering singles into oblivion. While it hit, along with follow-up single "All Day and All of the Night", just a little too late for the first album, the second would benefit handsomely from the boost.

Since "You Really Got Me" was a Ray Davies original, the management and record label, Pye, were suddenly experiencing an unquenchable thirst for original Kinks material. Kinda Kinks would be far less covers-driven, though "Naggin' Woman" and "Dancing in the Streets" would sneak into the track listing. This is probably, if I read the liner notes correctly, due to the sheer difficulty of trying to create 14 fresh new songs in a matter of months. So in the end it was 10, with an assist from brother Dave, who at this point was doing more singing that writing, on one of them. Adding to the misery of having to write under the gun, the band must have also been forced to record the songs quickly, resulting in some sloppy production work from Shel Talmy. Also, about half the songs, though thoroughly infused with a sound only the Kinks could provide, are filler-grade stuff. In the middle of it all though all some key tracks: "Tired of Waiting For You", "Come On Now", and "Something Better Beginning", a track you can slow dance to. Director Wes Anderson would drastically elevate the status of the other hushed number, "Nothing in the World Can Stop Me Worryin' About that Girl" when he included it in the Rushmore soundtrack. "Don't Ever Change" isn't that great a song, but has an absolutely beautiful opening riff, which, alas, doesn't stick with the rest of the song.

As with most British bands in the mid-1960's, the LP's were often not the best representation of the band's best work. In the CD era this means that these albums have a lot of bonus tracks and many of them are better than the original album tracks. Thanks to a clutch of important singles and the EP Kwyet Kinks (God, those puns), Kinda Kinks has been greatly enhanced with their inclusion as bonus material. In fact, the first five tracks following the conclusion of the album are required listening for even the casual fan. "I Need You" alone (a B-side if you can believe it) probably launched a thousand garage bands in the United States, where the Kinks enjoyed an influence among musicians far beyond their own album sales. "Ev'rybody's Gonna Be Happy" and "Set Me Free" are quite possibly the best examples of what the Kinks could do in 1965. Meanwhile, "See My Friends" is the band's very first foray into Indian-influenced music, narrowly beating the Beatles and the Yardbirds to the punch though perhaps not as overt as what those bands would do initially. The Kwyet tracks are generally unremarkable with one giant exception. "A Well Respected Man" could very well be the template for about the next four Kinks albums, dripping with social commentary and exploring English music hall styles, something their rock peers hadn't considered. For me, it's probably the single most important track of the entire CD. Some other interesting aspects of the bonus tracks include the first fully formed Dave Davies song, and a demo version of "I Go to Sleep", a song Ray ended up letting others (Sonny & Cher) make famous.

In my early Kinks collecting (NOT "kollecting" - I am an adult), I let a greatest hits album cover for the first three albums until my voracious collecting of their later albums naturally led me back to picking up the others. In fact, I jettisoned the old CD once I got the actual albums, the mid-2000's reissue versions. However that CD was instrumental in getting me into the Kinks, so the uncertain consumer may be wise to start there, then go after some of the later albums, then come back around if still looking for more.

The third album, The Kink Kontroversy, the fourth, Face to Face, would continue to advance the Kinks sound pioneered by this album. However, even in the bonus tracks of this album, the listener can detect a continuous movement away from the "original" Kinks. The later albums feature more varied instrumentation and more wry lyrical observations, largely fueled by Ray's path to and from a nervous breakdown in 1966, combined with a crippling American touring ban. That, however, is another story for another album.