The Year's Best

Issued on Essential in 1994, Shriekback's double-disc Natural History set merely couples The Best of Shriekback: The Infinite (Kaz, 1987) with The Best of Shriekback, Vol. 2: Evolution (Kaz, 1988) under a new name. For the curious, this might be preferable to The Y Records Years (also a two-disc set, released six years later in 2000), since the terrain documented here is more expansive, covering the band from its inception through 1985's Oil and Gold. One major attraction is the number of selections on the second disc culled from the long out of print Jam Science. One major problem will be finding Natural History, as it has gone out of circulation since its release.

The Kinks were one of the most influential bands of the British Invasion. Early singles "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night" were brutal, three-chord ravers that paved the way for punk and metal while inspiring peers like the Who. In the mid-'60s, frontman Ray Davies came into his own as a songwriter, developing a wry wit and an eye for social commentary that culminated in a pair of conceptual LPs, The Village Green Preservation Society and Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire), that proved enormously influential over the years.