["Sleepwalker"] emphatically testifies to the dramatic artistic revival of Raymond Douglas Davies, whose supreme talents as a writer have been so distressingly overlooked during the first half of this decade.

Davies' restless imagination and determination to pursue, over the last six years, a unique musical course which paid no homage to prevailing fashions and ideas, undoubtedly cost the Kinks the praise of the popular audience they deserved and the commercial success that would have justified their leader's uncompromising idiosyncrasies in the face of often universal critical disdain and popular indifference.

But their achievements have been no less entertaining during this time, and those who persevered with Davies will argue that the Preservation trilogy, though flawed and inconsistent on record, provided the basis for one of the few successful fusions of rock and theatre when it was transferred to the stage.

Similarly, the Kinks' last album for RCA, "Schoolboys...