[Looking through my collection of the Kinks's] early Reprise albums, I was struck by how very many Kinks songs deal with the wish to be somewhere, sometime, someone, or even something else (King Kong is a good example). Long before it became fashionable in rock, Ray Davies was a master at creating a nostalgic mood…. And, now that it's once again out of vogue (for which mercy God be praised), Ray has returned to this genre [on "Schoolboys in Disgrace"], if indeed he ever left it. Even given all that, the last thing in the world I expected now was an album full of yearnings for "those happiest days of your life" as a carefree student. I've always regarded Ray as, among other things, unalterably opposed to conformity, regimentation, intellectual repression, and all such dehumanizing horrors, which are the main things I remember from my school days...