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Wednesday, 25 January 2006 10:57

Despite the English songwriter’s self-imposed stateside sentence and citation of American culture as song fodder, Davies is still a chiefly British export, and this collection of pop-rock peculiarities showcases the aging singer at his most Anglo.

Ray Davies considers himself a renegade artist, an outcast unsuited for the conceits of fine art. So he makes his own art, whittles his own curios for the cabinet and spins his own stories. And with all he’s seen as a veteran of the ’60s British Invasion, he’s got a million of ’em.

As the driving force behind seminal Brit rockers the Kinks, Davies brings a lot to the table, in the form of history, experience, and musical expression. And he’s been shot in the leg by a purse-snatcher in New Orleans, for Christ’s sake. Though the Rolling Stones recently released their 700th record—the first in a decade or something—and survived dying guitarists, messy public divorces, and defecting bassists, when was the last time Jagger or Richards took a bullet to defend the handbag of a female friend?

Davies’ time spent in the United States—in particular, living recently in pre-Katrina New Orleans—infused the original Muswell Hillbilly with American culture and character, ultimately leading to the creation of Other People’s Lives. The new record, reportedly Davies’ debut solo album (if you don’t count the 1985 soundtrack to the artist’s own short film Return to Waterloo, or his The Storyteller album from ’98 featuring spoken word tales and re-workings of Kinks classics), showcases the perennially grinning songster in top form, if not a little worse for wear.

Despite the English songwriter’s self-imposed stateside sentence and citation of American culture as song fodder, Davies is still a chiefly British export, and this collection of pop-rock peculiarities showcases the aging singer at his most Anglo. “Thanksgiving Day,” released as an early single and EP feature last fall, reverentially details an outsider’s view of the American holiday, likening the family event to his own childhood Christmases. Davies’ reminiscent character study of past neighbors yields “Next-Door Neighbour,” a British Vaudeville “Dedicated Follower of Fashion”–type tune with an inspired dumb-by-design reading.

The ex-Kinks frontman shines in the bluesy “Creatures of Little Faith” and the breakup rocker “All She Wrote.” The flamenco-tinged title track follows the assault on a pair of ill-fated lovers by relentless media wolves, and “The Tourist,” a wide-eyed, Big Easy-influenced take on travel—by way of Davies’ quintessentially British magic bus—jangles down very un-Kinks-like avenues. “The bigger the ego, the bigger the fall/When your reputation counts for nothing at all,” Davies sings in the emblematic “After the Fall,” a song which could have heralded the demise of Davies’ decades-enduring band, his brother’s (bandmate Dave Davies) debilitating stroke, and his own rehabilitation post-shooting.

The goofy “Is There Life After Breakfast” demonstrates Davies’ lifelong penchant for cheekiness in the face of cock rock stardom, as does the hilarious “Stand Up Comic,” which sees the singer likening his performing of new material to a lowest-common-denominator comedian appeasing a roomful of drunken, lowbrow louts: “And the clown does a belch and we all belch back, and that’s that.”

While Davies doesn’t run from his Kinky past, he confirms there is life after “Lola.” He’s still a well-respected man, despite what the guy who shot him in the leg early last year thinks.