Chronicling the songwriting genius of Ray Davies has never been easy, mainly because his glittering diamonds and pearls are often tarnished by various quirks and idiosyncrasies. And here we go again.
Muswell Hillbillies (’71) is not a concept album, but a collection of downbeat songs mostly about urban isolation and cultural paranoia, delivered with typical Kinks joie de vivre and laced with Davies’s wit. These range from Acute Schizophrenia Paranoia Blues (‘The milkman’s a spy and the grocer keeps on following me’), Alcohol (‘Oh demon alcohol, sad memories I cannot recall’), the anorexiathemed Skin And Bone (‘Her father and her mother and her sisters and brothers couldn’t see her when she walked by’). It’s all summed up with delicious irony on Complicated Life: ‘Well I cut down women, I cut out booze/I stopped ironing my shirts, cleaning my shoes/I stopped going to work, stopped reading the news/I sit and twiddle my thumbs cos I got nothing to do.’
Unfortunately Davies’s decision to record the songs on old 60s and 50s equipment, ostensibly to give them a nostalgic feel, instead gives them
