The Village Green Preservation Society: Remastered [Extra tracks]

Now virtually forgotten (and not particularly well known even in its day), "Village Green" the finest forty minutes of one of the cornerstones of the British hit parade. But, there's not one hit single here... nothing you're going to recognise from all those "Best of the Kinks" collections, and nothing that's ever going to be played on Radio 2. The closest you may have come to hearing this album could be hearing its grandson, Blur's "Parklife".

There are many who make Pepper-esque comparisons, crying about what this album "could have been". Think of it the other way round... if you take away the producers, the art departments and the marketeers, this is what you end up with. Raw beauty.

Within five years, some naff boy band will cover "Big Sky" or "Starstruck" for the soundtrack of some movie starring Hugh Grant, and it will stay at number one for an entire summer. Imagine how bad you're gonna feel if you don't discover this album before that happens. Buy it now, and discover that The Kinks made classic albums, not just classic singles.

Why the Kinks masterpiece seemed, on paper at least, to fail is something of a mystery. It is that rare piece, an album with a basic concept that carries itself for the duration; maintaining a central theme in both its musical texture and through the various character snapshots and sub-plots that the Ray Davies narrative portrays like an aural abstract painter. It arrived on the back of a 3-4 year period, in which The Kinks had endured a ban from touring the US - and so had set about refining that quintessentially English grain of song-writing that has remained their trademark. This album was the logical conclusion of that journey, and its status as the defining Kinks record has been cemented by its enduring influence on the Britpop generation of the 1990's and beyond.

In reality, the reason it was ignored is probably because up to that point, the band had played the game in the UK singles market with such accomplished success that the albums were rather overshadowed. The Kinks really were the UKs definitive singles act (apart from The Beatles) and maybe people didn't expect them to be ploughing so much of their creativity into an album. Preconceptions do count for a lot, even amongst the bands record label, who apparently were guilty of gross under-selling on their product.

And yet, all of this counts for little, because well into its fourth decade, this album is still selling, still being discovered by new devotees - propelled with a word of mouth momentum by those in the know. Now in the 21st century, I predict its stature will continue to rise, for it stands as an incredible snapshot of a period in post war history. The albums themes centre around a longing for old values and traditions in an ever changing modern world - feelings that resonate strongly in the 21st century. That the piece is delivered by a man with a genius for melody and lyrical observation lends it a depth that will ensure the record never slides into meer nostalgia. Ray Davies has his tongue firmly in cheek, he knows that times have to change and finds much pathos and humour in the way we all fight it, all the while creating such vivid images of a period in history that reveal he too is secretly longing for things to stay the way they were.

There are no valid reasons not to own this album. It's a Britpop classic, a musical opus of the highest calibre, written and performed by Ray Davies and The Kinks at the peak of their powers.