On the other hand, this collection sounds pretty good. Also, the collection successfully emphasizes the Kinks golden age from 64-71 with a few later tracks thrown in. I would have liked to have seen a little more from "Village Green Preservation Society" (especially the title track), but it's hard to quibble about anything that's included.

Highly recommended.


Nice Collection, But You Need The Albums   November 9, 2004
Mr. Music (Sydney, Australia)
28 out of 29 found this review helpful

I won't go into much detail with this review, suffice to say that is a very good collection that covers a lot of ground. What it doesn't quite do successfully however is demonstrate just why the Kinks were so great - sure, it has the classics like "Sunny Afternoon", "Waterloo Sunset" and "Lola", as well as a number of quality album tracks, but it under-represents the period where they were at their most brilliant (and quintessentially British!) - i.e the Village Green and Arthur albums. So while you can listen to this collection and appreciate that these songs are terrific, you don't really get too much of a sense of why this band was so important and why, for that matter, they were so influential to the Britpop bands (particularly Blur, with their Parklife and Great Escape albums). Having said that, I think this is a useful collection because it covers all of the high points of their earlier work, when their albums weren't consistent. I think if you get this set, Face to Face, Something Else..., Village Green..., Arthur..., Lola vs Powerman and Muswell Hillbillies, and possibly Kink Kontroversy, then you have the best of the Kinks and all you really need.


Great songs and great sound, but this collection is misleadingly incomplete   May 12, 2005
W. M. Davidson (St. Louis, MO)
20 out of 20 found this review helpful

I just had to comment on how heavily slanted this "ultimate" collection is. It purports to cover the Kinks' entire career, but practically all of the material here is from the very narrow period from "The Kink Kontroversy" (1966) through "Something Else by the Kinks" (1967). The remaining 30+ years of the band's career is covered by a few carelessly tacked-on tracks at the end. Prominent late-'60s albums like "Arthur" and "The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society" are glossed over, and the band's popular resurgence in the 1980s is almost totally ignored. Obscurities like "Sittin' on My Sofa" and "She's Got Everything" are great for devoted Kinks fans, but on a career overview album aimed at new or casual fans, why include them instead of later hits like "Destroyer" and "Sleepwalker," or even key peak-era album tracks like "Picture Book"? Why bother covering the later years at all if the collection is going to be so hopelessly lopsided?

However... You really can't argue with the remastered sound quality of the early tracks here. It's arguably the best source for this material-- "The Singles Collection" sounds a little more crisp, but it's hard to deny the buzzy immediacy of "Autumn Almanac" and "Set Me Free" as heard here.

So, for Kinks fanatics, I'd have to reluctantly recommend this album for the sound quality alone, and the inclusion of a couple of tracks that are hard to find on CD otherwise. Novices beware the misleading title though: this is hardly an "ultimate" representation of the Kinks.