Preservation Act 2

Preservation Act 2 is a 1974 concept album by the English rock band the Kinks, and their thirteenth studio album. It sold poorly, and received a mixed response among critics. Ken Emerson, in Rolling Stone, held up the album as an "underrated" one in the Kinks' repertoire. The live performances of the material were much better received, with one critic going so far as to say that the Preservation shows were the first successful fusion of rock and roll with theater: "Ray Davies has finally pulled it off— the Kinks-based theatrical production of Preservation is a great rock concert and a perfectly coordinated musical." Some later critics have panned the album: The A.V. Club described it as "sprawling... with its radio announcements and melodramatic, sub-Andrew Lloyd Webber musical numbers, is a wash, the sound of a once-great band losing the plot." AllMusic referred to it as "a mess, an impenetrable jumble of story, theater, instrumentals, 'announcements,' unfinished ideas, guest singers, and, on occasion, a song or two." The 1991 CD reissue on Rhino was a two-CD set combining Preservation Act 2 with its 1973 predecessor Preservation Act 1, but with no bonus tracks.

Text:WikipediaCC BY-SA 3.0