Preservation Act 1
by The Kinks
eBay
Condition: Used
eBay
Condition: Used
The Kinks bestography
Preservation Act 1 is ranked 13th best out of 62 albums by The Kinks on BestEverAlbums.com.
The best album by The Kinks is The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society which is ranked number 149 in the list of all-time albums with a total rank score of 9,171.
(N.B. Bestographies include all albums by an artist (and their variations), but do not include albums ranked outside the top 100,000).
Listen to Preservation Act 1 on YouTube
Preservation Act 1 track list
The tracks on this album have an average rating of 79 out of 100 (all tracks have been rated).
Preservation Act 1 rankings
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Preservation Act 1 ratings
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Showing latest 5 ratings for this album. | Show all 75 ratings for this album.
| Rating | Date updated | Member | Album ratings | Avg. album rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ! | 02/14/2026 03:22 | brent13 | 2,089 | 67/100 |
| ! | 01/02/2026 00:48 | Exist-en-ciel | 12,573 | 70/100 |
| ! | 11/15/2025 23:18 | LittleM1971 | 5,962 | 81/100 |
| ! | 10/29/2025 01:57 |  MadhattanJack | 5,933 | 66/100 |
| ! | 08/02/2025 12:57 | daCritic | 4,556 | 73/100 |
Rating metrics:
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(*In practice, some albums can have several thousand ratings)
This album has a Bayesian average rating of 67.8/100, a mean average of 67.3/100, and a trimmed mean (excluding outliers) of 67.3/100. The standard deviation for this album is 15.5.
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Preservation Act 1 comments
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Best Tracks: Sweet Lady Genevieve, Daylight
First of a muddled two part album series called, preservation act. Ray Davies has gone past the stage of writing killer hit singles and is now completely immersed in odd concept albums. It's not bad, but it's not great either. I don't know if I can't follow the story properly or I just don't care. Probably a bit of both.
This is one of the most overlooked and unfairly underrated Kinks albums.
It may have vanished a little in the amount of very strong album releases that characterized these years. Moreover the theme in "Preservation" came out much unresolved, and the plot and characters did not come out clearly until the release of "Preservation Act 2" the following year.
In fact this album, along with with "Muswell Hillbillies", for me is easily the group's strongest release during their time at RCA.
Several of the strong songs have only peripheral or no connection with the "Preservation" theme and in fact the album would probably have worked well as an ordinary album, with a dozen songs with different themes.
Songs like "Sweet Lady Genevieve" and "Sitting in the Midday", sung by the character "The Tramp" in "Preservation" are sone of Davies' most beautiful, and both are clearly releated with several songs of the original "The Vilage Green Preservation Society ".
"Where Are They Now" is nostalgic song about great men of the past - a theme also found on the "Muswell Hillbillies" - Great melody and another favorite.
The two opening tracks "Morning Song" and "Daylight" are very powerful and I remember how I got goose bumps during the performance of "Preservation Act" in London’s Royalty Theatre at Christmas 1974.
"Cricket" is a biting humorous song performed in music-hall style.
"There's a Change in the Weather", "Money and Corruption", "Here Comes Flash" and "Demolition" sound a lot like the songs from "Preservation Act 2" and they are tightly linked to the plot of the opera. Both are also fine songs that actually can be enjoyed out of context.
An album everybody deserves to hear at least once.
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