The Kinks Choral Collection is a reworking of classic Kinks songs by the man who wrote them in the first place. Ray Davies, the primary singer and songwriter for The Kinks, has not strayed incredibly far from the songs' original arrangements. The gimmick here is that the backing vocals are provided by the 65 members of the Crouch End Festival Chorus.
With such a rich catalog of classic pop tunes to draw from, the album is quite listenable. Davies has chosen primarily from the mid-to-late '60s Kinks period, when his songwriting was among the very best pop music had to offer. The choral experiment doesn't really amount to much, with the original recordings remaining definitive.
A rather generic rock accompaniment is provided for most of the songs, with guitars, bass, and drums remaining generally faithful to the old versions. Some of the new arrangements work far better than others.
The second half of the album is dominated by a series of six selections taken from The Kinks' 1968 masterpiece The Village Green Preservation Society. "Do You Remember Walter?" starts off with a newly devised lilting ballad arrangement, providing a satisfying jolt of familiarity when the staccato rhythm of the original kicks in (albeit at a slower tempo). "Village Green," one of the slighter tracks from the original album, is given a haunting grandeur. In fact, there is a certain gravitas added to much of the material due to the massive weight provided by choral vocals.
On the other hand there are the early seminal rock classics, "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All Of the Night." These come across as mere novelties. Those primal riff rockers work best stripped down to the very basics, as The Kinks first recorded them. Grafting dozens of classically trained choral singers onto them comes off like a silly joke.
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