This is either a great idea or a terrible one. Anyone who has followed the musical loves of Dez knows that I worship at the altar of The Kinks. I have posted at length many times regarding The Kinks here at GNABB.
Kinks leader Ray Davies has decided to revisit some Kinks classics with a full choir behind him. Ray is generally not one to rely on his past triumphs (his most recent solo album from last year, Working Man's Cafe, was excellent). So when he does revisit the Kinks past, he usually tries to put a different twist on it. It is an interesting set-up. Ray plays with a traditional rock band, but the Crouch End Festival Chorus backs him as if it were a Sunday afternoon in church.
If you are familiar with The Kinks discography, you are probably thinking what I was thinking when I first heard about this release. This will work really well if he picks the right tunes. It will be awful if he picks the wrong ones. Ray's songwriting often has a wistful, nostalgic, particulaly English quality to it. It is those songs which would work the best. With two exceptions, every tune he reworks comes from his 1960's period (the exceptions being "Celluloid Heroes" and the title track to Working Man's Cafe, which actually works wonderfully with the older Kinks material).
"You Really Got Me" and "All Day And All of the Night" are as terrible as you might expect in this setting (are these jokes?), while "Waterloo Sunset" is as gorgeous as you would hope. There are several places where Ray and the Chorus really step out and take some chances with once familiar material. The melancholy "See My Friends" is given a haunting, a capella treatment that is quite compelling. The material that really lends itself well to the Chorus are Ray's ruminations on English culture, such as "Victoria" and the six song suite from The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society that closes the record. In fact, given the nature of the brilliant Preservation Society concept album, one wonders why Ray didn't just rework that entire album in a choral arrangement and then augment it with a couple of other thematically related gems here like "Waterloo Sunset." That would have been perfect. At any rate, the six song suite is brilliantly done, especially "Village Green" and "Village Green Preservation Society."
ABOVE: There's no video, but here is the audio of the lovely "Days."
The songs of Ray Davies are some of the finest in pop music. It is a pleasure to hear them in almost any context. Although the record has some embarassing missteps ("You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night" really need to remain in the gritty garage in which they were born to keep their potency), most of these tunes benefit from the formal, choral treatment, especially the more delicate mid to late 60's-era tunes that Ray wisely focuses on for most of the record. None of these versions will make you want to forget the originals, mind you, but they are different and interesting enough to give us a nice twist on the Kinks legacy. And as a whole, the record has a tight cohesiveness in mood to it.
**** out of *****
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