These are not your parents' Kinks.

Unless your parents are die-hard Kinks fans, that is. To your parents, and probably to most of their generation--and this is assuming that your parents, like mine, are baby boomers of some kind--the Kinks are "Lola," "You Really Got Me," and "All Day and All of the Night." Actually, that's what the Kinks are to anyone who enjoys oldies and classic rock radio. They're known for their handful of top forty hits, and it just so happens that those hits barely hint at the depth and beauty of their total catalogue.

Perhaps no album exemplifies the brilliance simmering beneath the pop surface of the Kinks than Muswell Hillbillies, released in 1971 and reissued late last year to perfection by Konk Records and Velvel Records. As Ray Davies comments in the album's liner notes, writing and recording the record was "the classic thing of not delivering what people think you're going to deliver. And I was very happy to do that." It's miles away on the musical map from what you're probably most familiar with from this band. Though it may not comprise what you imagine when you conjure up the "classic" Kinks sound, it offers dark, alluring riches all its own.

The immediate contradictions between the music and the lyrics on Muswell Hillbillies are exemplified in the record's title. Muswell Hill is a town in Britain where Ray Davies and his brother Dave grew up. Yet the title refers to Muswell "hillbillies," swiping a term that's American in connotation, most commonly associated with characters like Jed Clampett and the commercial pitchman Ernest. In a similar way, the words penned by Davies address specifically working-class British concerns, while the music draws from New Orleans and classic blues styles. The result is a rootsy sound that effortlessly evokes a powerful nostalgia, emotions that connect precisely with the attitudes of the characters in the songs. Though the sounds and the words are drawn from separate parts of the globe, there's an undeniable symmetry.

Hillbillies opens with probably its most famous track, "20th Century Man," serving as a hypnotic overture to the concerns that will be raised throughout the record. The characters and stories all revolve around a past that can never return, one that's not dominated by the "people in grey" or any "Acute Schizophrenia Paranoia Blues." These people never wanted a change. They yearn for the familiar, and they are consumed by fear of the world they live in now. They are paranoid and terrified.

Yet in the paradoxical way that so much great pop music has, they sing of it through one voice, with grace and wit. Few of the songs force their themes into the listener's mind; they meander toward their ideas, shuffling along with all the energy of the Thames on a still day. Davies' lead vocal guides the musical pace with its lazy British drawl and laid-back attitude. He sings as though he's reclined on the couch at home, staring at the ceiling and pondering the absurdities of twentieth-century life. The best tunes on the record--songs like "Alcohol," "Have a Cuppa Tea" and "Oklahoma U.S.A."--encompass all the contradictions at the heart of the album. They're funny but sad, poignant yet bitter, sweet and sour and angry all at the same time.

Complexity is just about all you can ask from a good pop record, and with all due respect to the Kinks, it's not something you'll get from "You Really Got Me." It's there in spades on Muswell Hillbillies, a wistful and bitter acoustic lament built around a longing for the familiar in a world where the only constant is change. That must be reminiscent of Ray Davies' message to Kinks fans who encountered this record in 1971; like the characters on his record, hang on for a bumpy, exhilarating ride, because the days when rock was simple--hell, when life was simple--are long gone.