Ray Davies may play the part of a vaudevillian fool on stage with his skinny
limbs sticking out of his ugly suits, but he's the rock-and-roll equivalent of
Noel Coward, a British misanthrope who skewers his country with sneaky
wordplay, an instinctive nose for details and an irrepressible affection for music-hall melodies. Davies, though, views
Britain from the opposite end of the class system than did Coward, and that has
made all the difference.
Davies has done his best writing of the '80s for the Kinks' new album, "UK Jive" (MCA). It combines the pastoral irony of his
first great period (from 1966's "Well Respected Man" to 1971's
"Muswell Hillbillies") with the hard-rock vaudeville of his second great period (from 1977's
"Sleepwalker" to 1979's "Low Budget") and offers the promise of a third creative spurt.
The Kinks' previous albums of the '80s always included three or four Davies gems, but they also contained a lot of
filler and no unifying sense of purpose. When founding drummer Mick Avory left
in 1983, the Kinks no longer sounded like a real band -- they sounded like
Davies and a bunch of session players. On "UK Jive" the Kinks sound like an ensemble again. An identifiable
"Kinks sound" marks every track, and Davies has responded to the band's revival with his
funniest, truest songs in years.
They are also his catchiest songs in years. It's no wonder that the title cut
is getting a lot of airplay, for it portrays British politics as the latest
dance craze ("swing your partner to the left/ swing her back to the right/ don't stand in the
middle") with a sing-along refrain and a swinging syncopation walloped by Davies' kid brother Dave on
guitar. "Aggravation" casts modern society in terms of an apocalyptic traffic jam ("breathing fumes, stuck in a tin can, trapped!"), but the music couples an old
Yardbirds buzzing guitar line to the get-up-and-go energy of a Beach Boys car song.
"What Are We Doing" captures the universal experience of feeling out of place in a supposedly hip
nightclub, in a relationship running on inertia or in a society running
on inertia, and Ray Davies asks the question to a bouncy, horn-pushed,
drinking-song melody. Dave Davies comes up with a crunching power-chord riff
worthy of his groundbreaking '60s hits for "Entertainment," Ray's vicious description of TV news cameras moving
in on an assassination while the blood's still wet on the pavement.
Several songs on "UK Jive" recall Ray Davies' late-'60s pastoral evocations
of pre-industrial England. "Now and Then," which swipes the piano chords
from "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling," contrasts the past and future
of England with little optimism. "Loony Balloon" is a "Yellow Submarine"-like
children's song, but it's also an obvious allegory for a society drifting without
control. When Davies cries out the chorus question of "How Do I Get Close,"
it's as honest and unprotected as he's ever sounded on a love song.
Throw in "Dear Margaret," the best song Dave Davies has ever written, and you have one of the best Kinks
albums of all time. It's too bad, though, that MCA failed to include a lyric
sheet for one of the best lyricists rock-and-roll has ever known.
Graham Parker: 'Human Soul'
"I know I got a kink somewhere," Graham Parker sings on the opening song of his new album,
"Human Soul" (RCA). Indeed, Parker has come closer than anyone to matching Ray Davies'
British, class-fueled, pugnacious misanthropy. Parker doesn't share Davies' wicked sense of humor and isn't as
good a lyricist, but he's a much better vocalist, and he writes the kind of
meaty melodies that a real soul singer can take advantage of.
The first side of Parker's new album -- dubbed the "real
side" -- is as good as any he's ever made. The second side -- which he calls the
"surreal side" -- is probably the weakest he's ever released. This is no coincidence.
"I look at a newscast being broadcast," he sings on one of the best songs,
"and try to connect with the events in front of my eyes, but I
can't see any further than the bills on the table." When Parker writes about the gritty details of his own life no one in
rock-and-roll is better, but when he attempts commentary on the world at large
he's lost at sea.
Parker has assembled an all-star band of pub-rockers for this outing: guitarist Brinsley Schwarz and bassist
Andrew Bodnar from the Rumour and keyboardist Steve Nieve and drummer Pete Thomas from the Attractions. They
play with the brisk, unfussy attack of their glory days in the late '70s, and
Parker's voice has grown warmer and more flexible with each new album. On
"Soultime," an autobiographical song about his teenage years listening to American R&B in a London disco, he sings well enough to resemble his old heroes.
One of those heroes -- say, Wilson Pickett -- could build a comeback around Parker's
"My Love's Strong," a powerful pledge of love that's the best thing on the album and a potential
standard. "Call Me Your Doctor" is a return to the blistering soul-reggae of Parker's legendary debut album,
"Howlin' Wind." Most ambitious of all is "Big Man on Paper," which seethes with
irony and frustration. Our hero drives down to "the Hudson Valley Mall," where the kids hang out
"in their Megadeth T-shirts." The kids don't recognize Parker, the critics' favorite, a
"big man on paper," and he feels "they might as well be from another universe."
Flip the album over to the "surreal side" and you find Parker taking wild shots at welfare families, modern violence,
refined sugar, fast food, AIDS, yuppies and the destruction of the rainforest
without hitting much of anything. And as the lyrics lose their focus, so does
the music, which seems to be spinning its wheels. Stick to autobiography, Geep.
Warren Zevon: 'Transverse City'
Warren Zevon is a misanthropic songwriter in the
Davies/Parker mode, but the Southern Californian has neither Davies' sense of
humor nor Parker's sense of outrage and can't sing as well as either. His new
album, "Transverse City" (Virgin), is his best of the 1980s, though, thanks
in large part to the drumming of Little Feat's Richie Hayward, who kicks
Zevon's music out of its usual sluggishness and allows it to actually gather
some momentum.
Zevon's lyrics have also thrown off some of their recent sluggishness and
self-seriousness. He represses his usual editorializing and allows his deadpan
descriptions of modern life (computers, shopping malls, traffic jams, genetic
engineering, ozone depletion and turmoil in Moscow) to speak for themselves.
Zevon is one of the few rock-and-roll songwriters with a sci-fi writer's
enthusiasm for scientific jargon, and his songs crackle with that brave
new language.
He has assembled a large cast of '70s rock stars to put this vintage batch of
songs across. Jerry Garcia's prickly guitar gives a perfect sci-fi feel to the
title song and "They Moved the Moon," while David Gilmour's rocket blast of guitar does the same
for "Run Straight Down." Neil Young's droning guitar roar gives
"Gridlock" an apocalyptic feel, and David Lindley's lyrical lap steel guitar makes
"Down in the Mall" jaunty. Members of the Heartbreakers and the Jefferson Airplane also help out,
as do jazz pianist Chick Corea and jazz trumpeter Mark Isham. Zevon's melodies are so blandly predictable,
however, that they hardly deserve such fine musicianship.
- Geoffrey Himes
Reproduced with kind permission from Geoffrey Himes.
Back to GP article bibliography