Some sweet irony has Ray Davies posted on [the cover of Preservation Act 2] as a demagogic hustler when his refusal to merchandise himself has long impeded widespread recognition of the Kinks.

Because Ray, on this album, mingles his persona as a reluctant rock star and querulous love object with the characters of Flash, Mr. Black and the Tramp (with a bogglingly well-realized cameo as Flash's Special Floosie Belle), then marches these composite characters into a scenario that clicks (musically and narratively) with Preservation Act 1: because that scenario is informed by a superbly intuited moral sense of history, utterly germane to this year of deposed monarchies; and because the whole thing rocks, rolls and saunters its way across four sides, Ray cannot be denied his place as rock's ascendant genius.

Think about the congruence between Ray's morality play and the musical theatre of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, specifically...