1001 albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 98. The Kinks – Something Else by the Kinks (1967)

Jumping from the sublime and haunting music of Buckley to the jaunty music-hall whimsy of the Kinks feels almost sacriligeous, but one soon gets dragged in. Compared to the previous Kinks album, this one heads more into the little vignettes of life and different characters (a bit like the way some Beatles songs are heading).

Thus we get the singer’s jealously of golden-boy David Watts, the classic paeon to Waterloo Sunset and young lovers Terry and Julie, the sibling rivalry of Two Sisters, the Dylan-esque parade of circus characters in Death of a Clown. The music runs through a range of styles too, again with a bit of a music-hall feel. The jaunty Twenties jazz stylings of End of the Season, for example, or Harry Rag, which has a march tempo, but feels like a sea shanty despite being about a collection of characters consoling themselves with a cigarette – needs some accordion in there.

It’s not as hard and rocky as prior Kinks outings, the overall soundscape is comprised of more delicate instrumentation and what it loses in oomph it gains in sophistication.

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