The Kinks – Low Budget (1979) [Remastered 2006]
PS3 Rip | ISO | SACD DST64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | Scans included | 1,09 GB
SACD-ISO PS3 Rip to FLAC 2.0 | 24 bit / 88,2 kHz | 59:17 min | Scans included | 1,19 GB

Low Budget doesn’t have a narrative like Preservation or Soap Opera, but Ray Davies cleverly designed the album as a sly satire of the recession and oil crisis that gripped America in the late ’70s — thereby satisfying his need to be a wry social commentator while giving American audiences a hook to identify with. It was a clever move that worked; not only did Low Budget become their highest-charting American album (not counting the 1966 Greatest Hits compilation), but it was also a fine set of arena rock, one of the better mainstream hard rock albums of its time. And it certainly was of its time — so much so that many of the concerns and production techniques have dated quite a bit in the decades since its initial release. Nevertheless, that gives the album a certain charm, since it now plays like a time capsule, a snapshot of what hard rock sounded like at the close of the ’70s. Perhaps not so coincidentally, Davies’ songwriting fluctuates throughout the album, since it’s dictated as much by commercial as artistic concerns, but the moments when he manages to balance the two impulses — as on the disco-fueled “(Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman,” the vaudevillian “Low Budget,” “A Gallon of Gas,” the roaring “Attitude” (possibly their best hard rocker of the era, by the way), and “Catch Me Now I’m Falling,” where Davies takes on the persona of America itself — are irresistible. Low Budget may not have the depth of, say, Arthur or Village Green, but it’s a terrifically entertaining testament to their skills as a professional rock band and Davies’ savvy as a commercial songwriter.  ~~ AllMusic Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

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The Kinks – Misfits (1978) [Remastered 2004]
PS3 Rip | ISO | SACD DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | Scans included | 2,25 GB
SACD-ISO PS3 Rip to FLAC 2.0 | 24 bit / 88,2 kHz | 55:18 min | Scans included | 1,09 GB

The Kinks became arena rockers with Sleepwalker, and its follow-up, Misfits, follows in the same vein, but it’s a considerable improvement on its predecessor. Ray Davies has learned how to write within the confines of the arena rock formula, and Misfits is one of rock & roll’s great mid-life crisis albums, finding Davies considering whether he should even go on performing. “Misfits,” a classic outsider rallying cry, and “Rock and Roll Fantasy” provide the two touchstones for the album — Davies admits that he and the Kinks will never be embraced by the rock & roll mainstream, but after Elvis’ death, he’s not even sure if rock & roll is something for mature adults to do. Over the course of Misfits, he finds answers to the question, both in his lyrics and through the band’s muscular music. Eventually, he discovers that it is worth his time, but the search itself is superbly affecting — even songs like the musichall shuffle “Hay Fever,” which appear as filler at first, have an idiosyncratic quirk that make them cut deeper. Although Ray would return to camp on their next album, Misfits is a moving record that manages to convey deep emotions while rocking hard. The Kinks hadn’t made a record this good since Muswell Hillbillies.  ~~ AllMusic Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

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The Kinks – Sleepwalker (1977) [Remastered 2004]
PS3 Rip | ISO | SACD DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | Scans included | 2,44 GB
SACD-ISO PS3 Rip to FLAC 2.0 | 24 bit / 88,2 kHz | 59:54 min | Scans included | 1,17 GB

Arista had made it clear they would not accept any concept albums from the Kinks, and Sleepwalker, their first effort for the label, makes good on the band’s promise. Comprised entirely of glossy arena rockers and power ballads, the album is more of a stylistic exercise than a collection of first-rate songs. Ray Davies contributed a handful of fairly strong songs, highlighted by the exceptional “Juke Box Music,” which sees him in a shockingly resigned frame of mind, claiming that rock & roll is just rock & roll, and nothing more. Unfortunately, he chose to illustrate that fact by loading the rest of Sleepwalker with competent but undistinguished mainstream rock. While that might have made the album a hit at the time, its processed sound and weak songs sound dated today, especially compared to the lively arena rock the Kinks later released.  ~~ AllMusic Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

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The Kinks – Celluloid Heroes (1976) [Reissue 2007]
PS3 Rip | SACD ISO | DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 74:40 minutes | Scans included |  3 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Full Scans included | 1,53 GB

Although they weren’t as boldly innovative as the Beatles or as popular as the Rolling Stones or the Who, the Kinks were one of the most influential bands of the British Invasion. Like most bands of their era, the Kinks began as an R&B/blues outfit. Within four years, the band had become the most staunchly English of all their contemporaries, drawing heavily from British music hall and traditional pop, as well as incorporating elements of country, folk, and blues.

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The Kinks – The Kinks Present: A Soap Opera (1975) [Remastered 2004]
PS3 Rip | ISO | SACD DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | Scans included | 2.16 GB
SACD-ISO PS3 Rip to FLAC 2.0 | 24 bit / 88,2 kHz | 52:37 min | Scans included | 1,04 GB

If there ever were a testament to Ray Davies’ stubbornness and ornery perversity, it’s Soap Opera. Released after the draining, two-part, hopelessly muddled rock opera Preservation, Soap Opera is the grandest concept album the Kinks ever made. Davies’ tackled a topic that seemed manageable compared to Preservation — how “Ordinary People” escape the doldrums with dreams of stardoms — but conceived the production as a bit of a radio play, with prominent guest vocalists and narration. Improbably, it feels larger, campier, more excessive than Preservation, even if it’s considerably more focused and consistent. The main problem is, its presentation is so damn silly that it’s hard to hear individual songs. Nothing here works as well as the best of Preservation, Act 1, but it holds together better as a record. Even so, Soap Opera winds up rather unsettling. Not only is it hard to get the gist of Davies’ narrative, but there’s not enough, musically or lyrically, to make it compelling. Then, there’s the nagging feeling that this isn’t really a Kinks album, but rather a Ray Davies solo project in disguise; the songs are certainly Ray’s, but there’s little that sounds like the Kinks, largely due to that ludicrous production. This isn’t just an outsider’s suspicion, either — Dave Davies and Mick Avory both mention this unease in Peter Doggett’s liner notes to the 1999 reissue of the album, but the true indication of the extent of Davies’ Soap Opera indulgence is that he never was allowed to go this far over the top again.  ~~ AllMusic Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

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The Kinks – The Kinks Present: Schoolboys in Disgrace (1975) [Remastered 2004]
PS3 Rip | ISO | SACD DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | Scans included | 1,49 GB
SACD-ISO PS3 Rip to FLAC 2.0 | 24 bit / 88,2 kHz | 36:18 min | Scans included | 730 MB

Ray Davies had indulged himself one time too often with Soap Opera, and his bandmates, namely brother Dave and founding member Mick Avory, revolted, insisting that their sixth RCA album sound more like a Kinks album (certainly, that’s something RCA wanted too). So, Davies designed their next album as a return to a simpler, band-oriented sound. Of course, he didn’t jettison his love for conceptual works, so Schoolboys in Disgrace was born. Working under the presumption that a return to simple rock demanded a simple theme, Davies constructed the album as a nostalgic trip through childhood, reviving ’50s rock & roll (including the occasional doo wop harmony) for the album’s foundation, then turning the amps up high. There’s no actual story per se — it’s a series of vignettes, like a coming-of-age film. As such, it’s intermittently successful, on both the hard rock (“Jack the Idiot Dunce”) and ballads (“The First Time We Fall in Love”), but it’s way too campy for anyone outside of the dedicated. And that campiness is all the stranger when married to thundering arena rock; at least with Preservation, the vaudeville made sense in context, but here, the Kinks are pulling in two separate ways, and Schoolboys winds up as one of their least satisfying albums as a result. [Koch released an SACD edition in 2004.] ~~ AllMusic Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

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The Kinks – Preservation Act 2 (1974) [Remastered 2004]
PS3 Rip | ISO | SACD DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | Scans included | 3.13 GB
SACD-ISO PS3 Rip to FLAC 2.0 | 24 bit / 88,2 kHz | 77:04 min | Scans included | 1,54 GB

Ray Davies released the “song” songs from Preservation — the character sketches, the wry observations, the lovely ballads — on the first record (or “Act”) of the musical drama, leaving the narrative for Preservation, Act 2, a double album released six months after its companion. Simply put, the record is a mess, an impenetrable jumble of story, theater, instrumentals, “announcements,” unfinished ideas, guest singers, and, on occasion, a song or two. There may have been a workable theatrical production hidden somewhere in Preservation, but it was utterly lost on record (reportedly it was better live), due in no small part to how it was unevenly divided, a practice that revealed Davies’ lack of realized songs for the project, plus his unfinished story. It was later revealed that Ray was at the end of his rope during the making of Preservation — he would have a breakdown during its supporting tour — so, perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that the album doesn’t work on its own. Nevertheless, it is remarkable that he was in such a fog, that he didn’t realize that “Slum Kids,” a staple in the Preservation shows and a concert favorite throughout the ’70s, was the best rocker he penned for the project and left it off both records. Thankfully, it was added as a bonus track to VelVel’s 1999 reissue of the album, improving the quality of the album considerably. The single version of “Mirror of Love” was added as a second bonus track to this edition, as well.  ~~ AllMusic Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

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The Kinks – Preservation Act 1 (1973) [Remastered 2004]
PS3 Rip | ISO | SACD DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | Scans included | 1,93 GB
SACD-ISO PS3 Rip to FLAC 2.0 | 24 bit / 88,2 kHz | 46:35 min | Scans included | 957 MB

Originally intended as a more thematic rendering of the characters and themes of The Village Green Preservation Society, Preservation Act 1 fails to realize Ray Davies’ ambitious goal of marrying theatrical elements with rock. Cutting down from a double album to a single LP left significant gaps in the structure and story line, with the plot coming across as virtually indecipherable, though the work still manages to capture a good deal of the nostalgic charm and caustic conservatism that marks much of Davies’ most notable work. Although widely remembered as one of the Kinks’ most resounding failures, Preservation Act 1, when viewed apart from the pretensions of Ray Davies, is really not that weak. While it may not work as a cohesive concept album, when taken on a track by track basis, some truly outstanding songs float to the top. No doubt, “Sweet Lady Genevieve” would not be out of place on an album like Something Else, just as the Dylanesque phrasing of “Where Are They Now?” or the brass section of “Cricket” would not be all that out of place on Muswell Hillbillies. The muscular, straightforward rock of “One of the Survivors” and the Beatles-circa-Abbey Road pop of “Money & Corruption/I Am Your Man” are decent, despite being second-tier Davies compositions. The low points, while rarely embarrassing, sound something like psychedelic show tunes and are plagued by a lack of focus and some of Davies’ less poetic musings. This may have been the first slip on a long and steady decline for the Kinks, but if Preservation Act 1 is, indeed, one of their worst albums, it speaks volumes about how prolific a run they had. ~~ AllMusic Review by Matt Fink

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The Kinks – Everybody’s In Show-Biz (1972) [Remastered 2006]
PS3 Rip | ISO | SACD DST64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | Scans included | 1,31 GB
SACD-ISO PS3 Rip to FLAC 2.0 | 24 bit / 88,2 kHz | 75:31 min | Scans included | 1,52 GB

Everybody’s in Show-Biz is a double album with one record devoted to stories from the road and another devoted to songs from the road. It could be labeled “the drunkest album ever made,” without a trace of hyperbole, since this is a charmingly loose, rowdy, silly record. It comes through strongest on the live record, of course, as it’s filled with Ray Davies’ notoriously campy vaudevellian routine (dig the impromptu “Banana Boat Song” that leads into “Skin & Bone,” or the rollicking “Baby Face”). Still, the live record is just a bonus, no matter how fun it is, since the travelogue of the first record is where the heart of Everybody’s in Show-Biz lies. Davies views the road as monotony — an endless stream of identical hotels, drunken sleep, anonymous towns, and really, really bad meals (at least three songs are about food, or have food metaphors). There’s no sex on the album, at all, not even on Dave Davies’ contribution, “You Don’t Know My Name.” Some of this is quite funny — not just Ray’s trademark wit, but musical jokes like the woozy beginning of “Unreal Reality” or the unbearably tongue-in-cheek “Look a Little on the Sunnyside” — but there’s a real sense of melancholy running throughout the record, most notably on the album’s one unqualified masterpiece, “Celluloid Heroes.” By the time it gets there, anyone that’s not a hardcore fan may have turned it off. Why? Because this album is where Ray begins indulging his eccentricities, a move that only solidified the Kinks’ status as a cult act. There are enough quirks to alienate even fans of their late-’60s masterpieces, but those very things make Everybody’s in Show-Biz an easy album for those cultists to hold dear to their hearts. ~~ AllMusic Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

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The Kinks – Muswell Hillbillies (1971) [Remastered 2004]
PS3 Rip | ISO | SACD DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | Scans included | 2.11 GB
SACD-ISO PS3 Rip to FLAC 2.0 | 24 bit / 88,2 kHz | 51:23 min | Scans included | 1,02 GB

How did the Kinks respond to the fresh start afforded by Lola? By delivering a skewed, distinctly British, cabaret take on Americana, all pinned down by Ray Davies’ loose autobiography and intense yearning to be anywhere else but here — or, as he says on the opening track, “I’m a 20th century man, but I don’t want to be here.” Unlike its predecessors, Muswell Hillbillies doesn’t overtly seem like a concept album — there are no stories as there are on Lola — but each song undoubtedly shares a similar theme, namely the lives of the working class. Cleverly, the music is a blend of American and British roots music, veering from rowdy blues to boozy vaudeville. There’s as much good humor in the performances as there are in Davies’ songs, which are among his savviest and funniest. They’re also quite affectionate, a fact underpinned by the heartbreaking “Oklahoma U.S.A.,” one of the starkest numbers Davies ever penned, seeming all the sadder surrounded by the careening country-rock and music hall. That’s the key to Muswell Hillbillies — it mirrors the messy flow of life itself, rolling from love letters and laments to jokes and family reunions. Throughout it all, Davies’ songwriting is at a peak, as are the Kinks themselves. There are a lot of subtle shifts in mood and genre on the album, and the band pulls it off effortlessly and joyously — but it’s hard not to hear Dave Davies’ backing vocals and have it not sound joyous. Regardless of its commercial fate, Muswell Hillbillies stands as one of the Kinks’ best albums. ~~ AllMusic Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

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