aesthetically interesting, he worried at the time that it was a risky release for the Kinks since it was "a bit too twee". He elaborated that compared to the band's earlier work, it was "missing [something] in terms of dynamics... it didn't seem to have that anger, the kind of attack that Dave used to bring". United States Village Green was especially well received by US critics. The album was not covered in major US trade magazines like Billboard or Cash Box but received extensive coverage from non-mainstream sources. America's new underground rock press began embracing the Kinks after the January1968 release of Something Else, a trend which continued following the release of Village Green. Reviews of Village Green were slow to appear after its February1969 release; the only immediate response was a short piece in the 27 February issue of New York City's Village Voice, in which Johanna Schier provided a mixed assessment. Schier described it as "a good album, not a great one", hampered by its attempts to extend in too many directions. She concluded that the album's best moments were when it approached the "[m]usical violence" which characterised the Kinks' earliest singles, though she still found the new music too subdued by comparison. In the 10 April issue of the Voice, Christgau countered Schier's review in his regular Rock&Roll& column. He instead concluded that the album was the best of the year so far. While Schier suggested that the band should have continued recording tracks with the raunch of "You Really Got Me", Christgau countered that the band necessarily progressed beyond their original sound, just as the Beatles never returned to recording songs like their earliest singles. He declared "Last of the Steam-Powered Trains" the album's most memorable song, placing it in the context of the rock and roll revival, and expected it would have been the lead single had there been enough demand. A review of the album by Paul Williams, the former editor of Crawdaddy! magazine, served as the lead review in the 14 June 1969 issue of Rolling Stone magazine. In addition to praising the album, Williams described Ray as a genius who "makes statements" and "says the sort of stuff that makes you delighted just to know that someone would say stuff like that". Comparing the Kinks to French composer Erik Satie, Williams concluded that "only genius could hit me so directly, destroy