Yep. Their main strength was not hard rock and they really weren't good at it.
But for me the first worthy Kinks album is Face to Face. The earlier albums are too hit-and-miss affairs. Before 1966 they were just a great single band.
All their albums from Face To Face to Hillbillies, on the other hand, are classics.
Also Ray ran out of original ideas and those later albums include too much self-plagiarism and stuff like that. Also his once so great lyrics got worse. In sixties his lyrics were sarcastic and funny, but then they became too straightforward and serious. And every song was about the same topic, how capitalism and technology is ruining mankind etc, I mean songs like 'Give People What They Want' etc
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