[The songs on The Great Lost Kinks Album] marvelously cohere to make this a real album and not merely an assortment of unrelated curios. This of course says a lot for the organic consistency of The Kinks' work. File TGLKA between Something Else and Village Green.

Like most Kinks albums since 1966, this one is sad. Oh, some of the songs sound happy enough, but they're wistful thinking, pathetically evanescent fantasies. There's no getting away from pain, ugliness, and isolation, which a few tracks face squarely. "Where Did the Spring Go?" is an extremely upsetting song about an aging man who has gotten nothing from life but varicose veins. "I'm Not Like Everybody Else" is chilling…. I still feel in the vocal's grating, paranoiac edge the fear and the menace of a cornered dog….

In his [liner notes John] Mendelsohn rather querulously argues that The Great Lost Kinks Album...