Ray Davies - Other People's Lives (V2)
UNLESS you count the 1985 soundtrack album, Return To Waterloo, this is Ray Daviesés first solo album of new non-Kinks material, and ités a cracker.Inspired, so it is said, by the experience of living in New Orleans, Daviesés music nevertheless manages to seem quintessentially English, and, more particularly, the voice of London.
So we get the age-old English advice to get a nice cup of tea in the quizzical Is There Life After Breakfast?, which concludes with the chirpy imprecation éPut the kettle on, mateé.
Fusty
Thereés something of the suburbs, too, about Next Door Neighbour, and there is a vein of fusty English disapproval about Stand Up Comic é railing against swearing and yob culture é and The Tourist, which offers a perky commentary on the venality of man.
There is also, as you would expect, some of the world-weariness which comes of being a 61-year-old, over 40 years into a pop career.
But songs like Things Are Gonna Change (The Morning After) and After The Fall also offer some silver lining, a sense of renewal and moving on. But there are also songs of unremitting bile. All She Wrote rolls all the break-ups in Daviesés life into one.
Other Peopleés Lives, which has a feel of Mark Knopfler about it, is another typically English plaint about media gossip-mongering. éI canét believe what I just read. Excuse me I just vomited,é Davies deftly rhymes.
Released on February 20
What do you think? Have your say
Reviewed: Fri, 27 January, 2006
