Nostalgia is a common refuge for the traumatised. In 1968, as his peers in pop gazed toward the dawn of psychedelia, Ray Davies was reeling from record company indifference, a ban from touring America, and a shotgun marriage to his pregnant girlfriend. His response was a song cycle, preserving in pop amber an antique, eccentric Britain that was already receding into history.

The characters and ambience of the Village Green are recreated vividly in Davies’s keenly observed vignettes, but the mood is coloured by a subtle, almost eerie melancholy. This was the work of a 24-year-old adrift and under flak, retreating from the world into his memories and imagination. The sense of loss, longing and displacement is palpable, especially on the haunting Do You Remember Walter?, with Davies exhaling: “Isn’t it a shame how our little world has changed?” Conjured over music recalling vaudeville and music hall, the songs are as witty, charming and surreal as the era that they depict.

The album coined an influential flavour of avowedly English pop, later referenced by Madness and Blur. This deluxe edition scatters stereo and mono versions, out-takes and B-sides across its three discs, but it is chiefly notable for the inclusion of tracks from the swiftly deleted 1973 compilation, The Great Lost Kinks Album. This suite of unreleased songs was written around the same time as the Village Green sessions and includes the sublime Where Did My Spring Go? , a wry, affecting and precocious lament for lost youth from a man not yet 25.

Stevie Chick

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