Face to Face

Ray Davies had a nervous breakdown shortly before the main sessions. He wanted to link the songs with sound effects, but Pye forced a standard format on the record, and contract disputes delayed release. Talmy is credited on the labels, though the sleeve calls him "Recorder". Quaife's car crash left the bass credits on a 6 June session disputed, and the researcher Doug Hinman could find no definitive answer. Ray later disliked the psychedelic cover.

The album was well reviewed and sold poorly. In Britain it reached number 12 on the Record Retailer chart and number 8 in Melody Maker, and in America it reached 135 on Billboard. AllMusic, Rolling Stone and MusicHound gave it five stars. It has been called one of rock's first concept albums and appears in Christgau's Basic Record Library and the 1001 Albums list. Several songs were left off, among them "Mr. Reporter", which was released in 2014.

Pitchfork's Lucy Sante wrote in 2018 that this was the turning point, when Ray decided to make music in his own image rather than for an imagined audience of mods. She heard a ruined toff in "House in the Country", "Most Exclusive Residence for Sale" and "Sunny Afternoon".