The Village Green Preservation Society [Extra tracks]

The opening track sets the scene perfectly, we are entering into a world celebrating the small marvels of the world, the idiosyncracies of the British and also the fear of passing time. All that and it's funny as hell too. Only the Kinks would dare to rhyme English-speaking vernacular with 'Moriarty and Dracula'. It has all the oomph, dash and sing-along of its cousin of similar name from the Italian job 'The Self-Preservation Society'

We then proceed to the Kinks just smacking home-run after home-run (or really six after six, a la Garfield Sobers). Walter captures the closeness of adolescent friendships while at the same time showing how such friendships decay and have nothing much to offer you in adolescence, Johnny Thunder the way oldfashioned comics and stories could pull you into their world, Last of the Steam-Powered Trains linking American blues into Hornby, Animal Farm and Village Green neat little vignettes of rural life. Big Sky is frankly amazing, you just can't work out what effect they have put on Davies' voice, but he sounds detached and otherworldly and though the lyrics are simple, they are written with a compelling and interesting perspective.

It is true that with Phenomenal Cat, we go rather off the rails and I can't make up my mind whether I adore or loathe All of My Friends Were There - it is sung in an old-fashioned music-hall style with swooping vocals and it is either marvellous or ridiculous depending on your mood. But at least they tried it.

And to be honest, Sgt Peppers has Lovely Rita Meter Maid AND When I'm Sixty-Four, so it is acceptable for a great album to have a bit of a shaky patch.

Blur were very sneaky in trying to rip this off without acknowledging it. The Kinks produce an album you can sing along to, or sit quietly and think about. And the title track will be bouncing round your head for days after you've heard it. It is really a four-and-a-half, well worth the money (even if my housemates asked me whether it was by the people who did Lilly the Pink)

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.