As The Kinks have been on hiatus since 1996, new albums by Ray Davies have been the closest thing we have gotten to the full thing. There have been a few over the years, but not too many.
The fact that Ray is now 74 years and allows himself more time between projects is a more than fair point. However, the fact that Ray is still with us should frankly be enough, after a near-fatal shooting in New Orleans in 2004 by a street thug. This took years to recover from. Davies was living in New Orleans at the time, exploring a country he always had a fascination for.
The recovery period ultimately spawned a book titled Americana in 2013.
He also wrote a lot of music as a companion piece – several albums worth, as it turned out. The first one, also called Americana, was released in 2017.
Now, just one year later, we have the second part titled Our Country: Americana Act II.
Ray Davies has enlisted The Jayhawks to be his backing band for these albums. A well-established American country rock group in their own right, they have the longevity and the background to give the music exactly the lived-in experience and flair that Ray is going for.
The songs are more Americana than country, retaining a basic rock element when needed, with plenty of nods to Ray’s musical background. The Jayhawks certainly know the distinction between doing their own thing and working as someone else’s band. At the same time, Ray picked them for a reason and seem to encourage displays of their own musical background. He clearly wants the music to sound like it says in the title.
It’s a fascinating experiment, really. Ray Davies is thought of as the quintessential British songwriter, always having written of archetypal English culture, traditions, and culture. Now he is immersing himself in a different culture, but he insists it’s not as alien to him as it may seem. He grew up fascinated by American music and cinema. He was heavily influenced by American musical styles, and has cited bluesmen like Big Bill Broonzy as a favourite.
When The Kinks went to America on tour for the first time in 1965, what should have been a dream come true turned sour when a permit refusal imposed by the American Federation of Musicians effectively banned the Kinks from touring in the US between 1965 and 1969. Ray spent the years in ‘exile’ making some of his most British-themed albums ever with the Kinks, but after the ban was lifted and US touring resumed, more American themes showed up in his writing again. In 1971 the Kinks released the country-rock tinged Muswell Hillbillies album, and the late 70s/early 80s saw them enjoy a few years as a bona fide US arena rock act.
All of this is covered in some detail in his book and on both Americana albums. They are clearly created with storytelling in mind. Several passages are narrated rather than sung. Ray will choose the form that gets the story across rather than force everything into song lyric form. Not that there isn’t a lot of that, too – the album has a bit of everything, and some songs even mix narration with singing. This may sound strange, but it really isn’t, unless you have your mind set on concrete, standalone songs in the pop or rock format. There are songs here that work like that too, but the biggest rewards are given to those who approach it as a complete piece of work with an open mind.
Many tracks on the Americana albums cover events related to The Kinks or Ray personally. The listener will benefit from familiarity with the subject, but it’s not a requirement as the stories that are told are designed to entertain on a standalone basis as well.
Although the songs will form an overall narrative, a lot of them are standalone in the bigger context. The album opens somewhat quietly with Our Country, which is a wistful, nostalgic song.
Walking ‘round my old hometown
Looking for some faces that once knew me
Though all the streets still look the same
Only memories remain
Gone are the folks I thought I knew so well
It is very like Ray to start the album with a certain overarching song – but I have a sneaky feeling that the ‘hometown’ he speaks of isn’t the Muswell Hill era in North London, although that would make the most sense.
On The Invaders Ray recalls the story of the mid-1960s American tour, when The Kinks were seen as part of the so-called British invasion. “Cos the world as we knew it turned upside down; And things would never be the same; The day the Invaders came.” America had spent a decade obsessing over a communist invasion, but it was a different type of invasion entirely that eventually happened.
The nostalgia is very much present on this album. On Back In the Day Ray sings of innocent days when he and brother Dave used to imitate the latest hits on the radio, over the course of the song recreating styles of music that came from all over the world – and America in particular.
The Real World is filled with impressions from finally going over there. Calling Home brings up themes of long-distance separation that comes from living on a different continent than where you have family and friends. The Big Weird describes the feeling of not fitting in, of remembering that no matter how much you integrate in a new country, it’s not really where you come from. The songs run the gamut of emotions and experiences, really.
The ‘rock’ moment on the album is likely The Take – a song which recalls the groupie phenomenon that The Kinks encountered on their American tours. It is interestingly written from both the male and female perspective, with Karen Grotberg from The Jayhawks taking the female voice. No words are minced when the female voice states what her goal for the night is, with Ray flatly responding “This is the way it works.”
It’s the kind of thing he would normally write a tongue-in-cheek song about, but here he is the reporter, the narrator. It does not feel like it’s meant to be a funny or a sexual song – it simply describes a part of a story; something that happened.
Ray pulls a few songs from his past out of the hat as well. Oklahoma USA is a highlight from the Kinks Muswell Hillbilly (1971) album, given a much more pensive treatment herer. The Getaway is a more recent track from Ray’s solo album Other People’s Lives (2006). Always one of my favourite Ray solo tracks, with a reasonable ‘Americana’-type treatment to begin with, it gets a downright low-key country treatment here.
The final song on the album, Muswell Kills, retains a lot of the song Muswell Hillbilly from that 1971 album again, but is rewritten to become more of a summarising song. And Ray does not compromise. In 2017, he told an interviewer “Just wait until you hear the song I will end my next album with. That song will redefine who I am.”
Where does Ray find himself after splitting so much of his adult life between Britain and America? The answer, according to Muswell Kills, is: “You can make this cockney move away from London; Learn a new dance, sing a different song; Make him do-si-do with a different partner; But you can’t make him forget where he comes from.” This is summarized more forcefully at the end of the song: “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks; No way, no f@cking way; So behave, don’t do it again.” All right, then!
Ray has always been known as one of rock music’s finest wordsmiths, and definitely delivers on this album as well. The music springs to the forefront as needed to embellish, to mark significance, and to provide emotional context.
The songs won’t barge down any doors – they will come creeping into your brain when you didn’t notice it. As such, the album is not necessarily an immediate one.
A lot of the songs are almost introvert in nature, by way of starting very quietly – almost tentatively. On an album where the focus is more on the lyrics and the story than the music, the music almost needs to hold back a bit, and especially when a song starts with narration. That does not mean that things don’t happen though. The Jayhawks are excellent at adding parts to the song when you don’t notice, and suddenly you realize it has built into something else.
Every time I go back to this album I still discover both musical and lyrical things I missed before. This is definitely an album that rewards repeat listening.
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