mail: daniel_fjall@hotmail.com
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face to face
Face To Face After some reportedly less impressive albums, The Kinks and main songwriter Ray Davies finally started to live up to the potential their singles suggested. With extremely loose and rough production blended in with nice pop melodies, their music lands somewhere in between The Rolling Stones and The Beatles. Yet they manage to sound unique, whereas The Stones and the fab four were looking at the States (blues and 50’s rock and roll were huge sources for both bands, and when The Beatles started to redefine their productions, they were glancing at American Brian Wilson’s work), The Kinks found inspiration in their homeland and developed a sound which didn’t try hide their British accent, nor were Davies’ lyrics shy of sarcastic remarks about the British life (peaking on Arthur Or the Decline And Fall of The British Empire, 1969). This approach clearly made the group special, but probably at the same time denied them any universal success in the same way as The Beatles, The Stones or whatever group that was huge at the time. Their utterly British ways along with the raw production can be hard for the listener to accept, but once you’ve gotten used to it, it clearly has a charm of its own and you are all set. Sometimes they would spend some time on the production, though. “Sunny Afternoon”, for instance, stands heads and shoulders above everything else on Face To Face. Well performed harmony vocals, accordion, tasteful bass work and distinct lead vocals makes it probably the best song on the album, and also is a career highlight. Other than “Sunny Afternoon”, most of Face To Face’s collected songs would be filed as ‘indie pop’ if they’d been released today. They are still very catchy, though. Opening “Party Line”, “Dandy” and “You’re Looking Fine” are great up-tempo pop songs and the line ‘everybody felt the rain’ in “Rainy Day In June” gets me every time. However, the reason to get Face To Face is the bonus tracks that are added to the CD-version. Fans back in the 60’s most have scratched their heads in confusion, wondering why excellent songs such as “Mr. Pleasant”, “This Is Where I Belong” and “I’m Not Like Everybody Else” was not included on the original release. The best of the bonus tracks is the “Sunny Afternoon”-sibling “Dead End Street”, which has some shouted backing vocals and an intro that recalls what The Clash would do on London Calling over a decade later, rather than what The Kinks' peers were doing at the time. Face To Face is a very good album, even without the bonus tracks, but I strongly suggest you look for the latest re-issue rather than a copy of the original version. The 8/10-rating is without any consideration of the extra material. Please add a point or maybe even two if you count the last seven songs as well.
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