Primer: The Kinks

The AV Club's Primer series takes a look at the seminal British rock band, The Kinks:

Primer is The A.V. Club's ongoing series of beginners' guides to pop culture's most notable subjects: filmmakers, music styles, literary genres, and whatever else interests us-and hopefully you. This week: The Kinks, broken down by 20 songs that define their themes and styles, and five albums that every serious rock fan should own. Kinks leader Ray Davies releases his latest solo album, Working Man's Cafe, next week.

The Kinks 101

In early 2008, The Kinks wound up, oddly and out of the blue, at the top of the U.S. album chart. Admittedly, that didn't have much to do with Ray Davies and company, who have been on hiatus as a group since 1996. It was Juno's recent Oscar nominations that catapulted the film's soundtrack into Billboard's number-one spot. And nestled between the disc's indie-pop and classic rock cuts is The Kinks' "A Well Respected Man," a top-20 hit from 1965 that predicted the wit, sophistication, and iconoclasm the band would make its trademarks.