or better or worse, we here at Stylus, in all of our autocratic consumer-crit greed, are slaves to timeliness. A record over six months old is often discarded, deemed too old for publication, a relic in the internet age. That's why each week at Stylus, one writer takes a look at an album with the benefit of time. Whether it has been unjustly ignored, unfairly lauded, or misunderstood in some fundamental way, we aim with On Second Thought to provide a fresh look at albums that need it.

Not only was Muswell Hillbillies the last "classic" Kinks album, it was their last good album period. It’s all downhill from here. Granted, by this point some kinks started showing in their armor with the previous year’s hit and miss Lola vs. Powerman and the Moneygoround and the god awful Percy soundtrack. But, nevertheless, the Kinks managed to recover from those minor setbacks and record what, in my opinion, is one of the finer albums of The Kinks’ career. It boils down to an interesting mix of British music hall (their equivalent of Vaudeville) and American country. Ultimately the last gasp before Ray Davies and the gang permanently lapsed into a high concept/low quality coma with Everybody’s in Showbiz, Preservation Acts 1 and 2, Soap Opera, and Schoolboys in Disgrace.

Of course, this being a Kinks album there was a theme: urban renewal in post-war England. The theme was first explored three years earlier on The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society when there was still a chance to preserve "merry old England", but now the wrecking ball is about to come through the living room wall. Songs such as "20th Century Man", "Here Come the People in Grey", and "Muswell Hillbilly" tell the tale of the demolition of quaint old neighborhoods in favor of "identical little boxes", "computerized communities", and "man made concrete mountains". Amidst all of this chaos, the people of the neighborhood take their minds off of it all by drowning their sorrows in "Alcohol", going on a "Holiday", or pretending they’re in "Oklahoma USA with Shirley Jones and Gordon McRea". Unlike the Kinks other theme albums, which mainly had a lyrical theme, Muswell Hillbillies has a musical theme as well. The previously mentioned mix of British music hall and American country, a theme which extends even to the album title itself.

The album opens with "20th Century Man", an anthemic country fueled attack on the government("I was born in a welfare state/ ruled by bureaucracy/controlled by civil servants/and people dressed in grey"), the art ("You keep all your smart modern writers/give me William Shakespeare/You keep all your smart modern painters/I’ll take Rembrandt, Titian, DaVinci, and Gainsborough"), and technology ("This is the age of machinery/a mechanical nightmare/the wonderful of technology/napalm, hydrogen bombs, and biological warfare") of the 20th century. The best song of the album and, in my opinion, one of the five best of their career.

Other highlights include "Acute Schizophrenia Paranoia Blues", notable for the first appearance of the Mike Cotton Sound, a trad jazz band that was eventually absorbed into the Kinks lineup. "Holiday", in which Ray adopts a faux delta bluesman voice which fits the lazy tone of the song perfectly. The music hall inspired "Alcohol", which became a staple of The Kinks live show in the seventies. The beautiful "Oklahoma USA", which was later covered by Yo La Tengo. And lastly, "Muswell Hillbilly" another country fueled anthem, albeit a little bit more relaxed than "20th Century Man". Which has Ray defiantly singing "they’re never gonna kill my cockney pride" and "they’re never gonna make a zombie out of me" as he’s forced out of his house into a computerized community and elecution classes because his accent isn’t right.

It’s sad to think about how far the Kinks fell after this point. A quote about Rod Stewart comes to mind when I think about the post- Muswell Hillbillies Kinks: "No one has ever betrayed their talent so completely". Despite the fact that the Kinks lasted twenty more years and recorded fourteen more albums, in my mind Muswell Hillbillies will always be their "last" album. A great ending for a great band.