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Kings-Size [Reissue]

Rhino's reissue of Kinks-Size from 1988 is a distillation of some of the best sides that the Kinks had cut from mid-1964 through the late winter of 1965, making it a seriously enjoyable album without any apologies or excuses, unlike their official albums of the period. Beyond the hit that was the album's raison d'etre, "All Day and All of the Night," listeners also got the group's underrated, Mersey-ish rendition of "Long Tall Sally," one of the more entertaining renditions of "Louie Louie" (with a delightfully slurred vocal by Ray Davies and lots of rhythm guitar) from across the pond, the pounding yet poignant lament "I've Got That Feeling," the just plain pounding "I Gotta Move," and the exquisitely plaintive "Set Me Free." The presence of a pair of upbeat, Mersey-style originals, "You Still Want Me" and "You Do Something to Me" -- which deservedly failed as singles but work just fine as album cuts -- help make Kinks-Size more cheerful and less dour than the group's official LPs of the period, while the Bo Diddley-style call-and-response number "Things Are Getting Better" adds extra muscle to side two. "I Gotta Go Now" starts out like a second-rate track until the band starts stretching out on the song in ways that few U.K. bands of the period ever did in the studio, and it ends up being diverting. Of course, for vinyl collectors as well as listeners during the early-CD era, the best part about Kinks-Size is that it was full of tracks that were otherwise never on LP and scattered over nearly a half-dozen singles and EPs, though most of its songs have since turned up as bonus tracks on the 1998 U.K. CD reissues of The Kinks and Kinda Kinks albums.
source: Bruce Eder, Allmusic Guide