Volatile Kinks

British group mourned the failure to preserve a lost England | Arsenio Orteza

CPB/UPPA/Zuma Press/Newscom

In the 24 years since Bob Dylan's Biograph kicked off the boxed-set craze, every pop act of any significance has been enshrined in what has become the audio equivalent of the coffee-table book—every act, that is, except the Kinks.

Enter Picture Book (Sanctuary), a chronological, six-disc overview of the group's 30-year career, which was released in December, nearly 19 years after the original lineup's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and 12 years after the final lineup's breakup.

Has it been worth the wait? For the most part, yes. The 82 songs on Discs 1 through 3 chronicle the years 1964, when their garage-band classic "You Really Got Me" exploded on both sides of the Atlantic, through 1970, when their tongue-in-cheek gender-bender classic "Lola" did the same. It was a period during which the Kinks not only kept quantitative and qualitative stride with their British Invasion peers the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Who but also sometimes outstrode them.