66. The Kinks - Face to Face

Artist: The Kinks
Album: Face to Face
Year: 1966

Throughout my teenage years I was always a bit of an Anglophile. It helped that those years lined up perfectly with the Britpop era, the "Cool Britannia" of Tony Blair's Prime Ministership that promoted the embracing of all things distinctly English. Some Britpop bands eventually made their way to America (Oasis and Blur to name the big two), but my obsession persisted much deeper. Dodgy, Marion, Shed Seven, Menswear, and Sleeper were all favorites of mine, just to name a few of Britpop's lesser-known acts. Fun fact: the first album I ever bought was Blur's Modern Life Is Rubbish back in 1993 after seeing the video for "Chemical World" on MTV's "120 Minutes." Naturally, at some point I got rather interested in where the Britpop bands drew their inspiration from. Some were direct descendants of The Smiths, others Squeeze, others The Beatles. But all of them listed The Kinks seemed to list The Kinks as a major influence. And thus began my interest in all things Kinks.

To me, The Kinks are one of rock and roll's oddest stories. Their first recordings in some sense set the groundwork for three-chord punk, singles like "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night" were among the most rocking songs of the mid 1960's. And then all of a sudden, at the point where most bands were getting more muscular, going into hard rock, heavy metal, and blues rock, The Kinks went exactly the opposite route. They got considerably more poppy, considerably less rocky. Their lyrics reflected both a fondness for and a restlessness with the politics of their homeland. Many of their songs began to play as little social commentaries on life in England in the late 1960's, little vignettes of fictional people of various societal castes. They became fairly popular at home but failed miserably at making inroads on the opposite shore of the Atlantic during this phase, the phase most people consider their best.

Face to Face is the album that started off this phase of their career, and in my opinion it's a really uneven album, though it would set the template for what would follow. The Beatles were doing some similar stuff at this stage of the game, just as overtly political (see: "Taxman"), and were doing it much better. It would take until Village Green a couple years later before The Kinks would reach their peak.

"Sunny Afternoon," "Rosy Won't You Please Come Home," and "Too Much on My Mind" (among others) are all classics...I love the harpsichord on "Rosy" and "Too Much on My Mind." Some of the songs on the second half of the album fall a little flat. "Fancy" tries to throw in some sitar a la George Harrison's experiments on Rubber Soul and Revolver, and it doesn't quite work for me. "Holiday in Waikiki" goes for a Hawaiian guitar feel, but the effect is more annoying than endearing.

This album is worth a listen, but like I said, their better stuff would come later....

Rating: Worth a listen