Something Else by the Kinks

Performer: The Kinks
Producer: Shel Talmy; Ray Davies
Distributor: WEA (Distributor)

Notes: The Kinks: Ray Davies, Dave Davies (vocals, guitar); Pete Quaife (bass); Mick Avory (drums). Personnel: Dave Davies (vocals, guitar, harmonica, keyboards); Ray Davies (vocals, guitar); Mick Avory (drums). Recording information: PYE Studios (11/1966-06/1967). Photographer: Mario Hallhuber. Having closed out their hard-rock period, the Kinks went pastoral on SOMETHING ELSE. It's an album of folk and pop songs about the quiet pleasures of family life and the English countryside, dotted with harpsichords, acoustic guitars, and ethereal harmonies. A radical rejection of the Age of Aquarius, it was one of the boldest pop albums of its time, a commercial failure but an artistic landmark. In "Two Sisters," Ray Davies sings about a wild, swinging woman and her homemaking sister, and dares to side with the latter. Other songs include "Afternoon Tea," surely the first rock song ever written on that subject, and the majestic "Waterloo Sunset," which has been described as the most beautiful song ever written in the English language.

Rolling Stone (9/14/00, p.180) - 5 stars out of 5 - "...An eccentric brand of rock & roll that had far more to do with Thomas Hardy than Chuck Berry....The arrangements are quieter and occasionally employ keyboard and strings....The album's gem is its concluding track, 'Waterloo Sunset'..." Mojo (Publisher) (9/03, p.124) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...SOMETHING ELSE, originally released in 1967, was the anti-PEPPER..."

Like most mid-1960s British rockers, the Kinks started out as an R&B group before they helped invent hard rock and ventured into sardonic, Beatles-inspired pop and refreshingly unpretentious rock opera with an English music-hall tinge. Ray Davies' biting lyrical wit and brother Dave's primal power chords proved an unbeatable and tremendously influential combination. For as long as the notoriously combative siblings could comfortably coexist, the Kinks continued to ply their intelligent brand of Brit-rock.

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