I certainly love the Kinks; it's been fifteen months since I've had a new Kinks album in my house, and though I've been listening to them I've missed that pleasure…. I've played [The Village Green Preservation Society] twice since it arrived here this afternoon, and already the songs are slipping into my mind, each new hearing is a combined joy of renewal and discovery. Such a joy, to make new friends! And each and every song Ray Davies has written is a different friend to me.

Ray makes statements, he says the sort of stuff that makes you delighted just to know that someone would say stuff like that….

Now why is it Ray's songs always sound like something else, a different something else with each song and sometimes with each hearing? Sure, he's the world's master plagiarist, but it's more than that. It's more a feeling that...