The 2001 album Ray Davies called a modern ‘Village Green’: “An artistic death wish”
If you view The Kinks exclusively by their commercial successes, Ray Davies’ group appeared to deal solely in short, sharp, rock and roll singles – ‘You Really Got Me’ and ‘All Day and All of the Night’ leading the charge. That reputation, however, omits the songwriting genius at the heart of albums like 1968’s The Village Green Preservation Society.
Arguably, Davies’ magnum opus as a songwriter, the LP that explored misguided nostalgia, middle England, and satirised the class structure, was the first Kinks record not to chart on either side of the Atlantic Ocean. What’s more, due to the songwriter’s indecisiveness over whether the album’s title track, ‘Village Green’, should be released as a solo track or not, it was never even issued as a single in the UK, subverting the accepted music industry practice of releasing a lead single ahead of the full album.
By commercial standards, then, that 1968 LP was considered a flop by many, and its perceived failure seemed to stick in Ray Davies’ mind. It was, however, a crucial record from a period of time in which rock and roll was moving away from the 45 rpm format, ushering in ‘the album era’ and striking upon ambitious, album-spanning narratives. More importantly, perhaps, it allowed Davies to explore his own psyche during a rather transformative period in his life.
According to the veteran songwriter, that experience was rather essential, both in keeping The Kinks alive and kicking for another few decades and in satisfying Davies’ artistic needs. “I think every band goes through a phase where they sit back and think about what their future’s going to be,” he told Uncut in 2014, citing Village Green as “a crossroads record”.
That practice is not exclusive to Ray Davies’ generation of songwriters, either. “Wilco did it with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,” he went on. “Village Green was ours. Maybe it’s an artistic death wish, to put something out like that.”
Reflecting on the social conditions that spurred on The Kinks’ masterpiece, he added, “But you had underground music starting, with the West Coast explosion in America, and our management were sending us to play working-men’s clubs up north.”
None of those conditions remained by the time that Wilco struck upon Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in 2001, but it is still easy to see the parallels between those two seemingly disparate albums. Aside from Jeff Tweedy’s open adoration for The Kinks, that record contains a similar degree of artistic innovation and ambition, going against the grain of what was perhaps expected of the band at the time of its release.
Another similarity between the two records is that they were both ahead of their time enough to be completely misunderstood upon initial completion. In Wilco’s case, for instance, Reprise Records were so baffled by the final album that they flat-out refused to release it, fearing a complete commercial failure. Yet, when it finally reached the airwaves as a self-released record, it made up for its lack of sales figures in its sheer impact on the landscape of alternative music.
The two records might have been released 33 years apart from one another, but they are both cut from the same cloth, as far as Ray Davies is concerned.
