Customer Rating:  
Summary: Poor Production and Arrangements Destroy Great Songs
Comment: What can one say about a CD whose best track is the bonus "demo version" of the album's first song? I'll take the simplicity and purity of the demo version of Vietnam Cowboys over the poorly realized final product any day.
Customer Rating:
Summary: NO GREAT SING ALONG MELODIES...
Comment: I know. You ALL gave the CD FIVE Stars. I have been as most of you have been a KINKS /RAY Davies fan since 1964. As the lyrics of "Rock and Roll fantasy" go "I've Seen Them Up and I've Seen Them Down" (Down includes seeing Ray throw a bottle of water on Dave at the Pier during a fight in NYC in 1986! abruptly ending a GREAT Kinks show). Sorry, for me, the melodies don't cut it. the words are fine poetry. But not the music. I don't hear any great Ray melodies. The last great RAY melody for me was THE ROAD, LONDON SONG, TO THE BONE or X RAY (the song). I anticipated this release greatly even buying an advance copy from the UK which did not even include the DVD. I prefer Ray's more acoustic work of the past solo Cd's and his solo recent live storyteller tours For me, this musically is just "OK". But then again "I'm Not Like Everybody Else".
Customer Rating:
Summary: Wow
Comment: Fantastic. Ranks right up there with some of Ian Hunter's work over the last fifteen years: poignant, mature lyrics, instantly catchy riffs. There's not a throwaway track here. Don't think you need to be a Kinks fan to appreciate this disc. Highly recommended.
Customer Rating:
Summary: One more voice in the chorus
Comment: It is gratifying to see that so many others hear what I am hearing with this record. As another who unashamedly admits to loving Ray Davies even though I find most of his post-Warners/Pye work to be sub-standard, more downs than ups, this is the record we have been waiting for for years. Us fans knew it was in him.
This record is so much better than the previous one. The songs are better, the production is far more sensitive to Raymond Davies strengths. I have read he does not like his voice, well, I do not like mine that muich either, but this recording was made to capture this voice. Ray IS a great singer with a vast range of emotion and phrasing, and all of the other tricks of the trade. Here they represent sincerity in the service of art. The recording is first rate and voice is placed front and center where it belongs with a naturalness missing in too many recordings these days.
Ray's point of view might strike some as political, but it is of a subtle form, not as the activist with the histrionics associated with that tiresome pose, but as one who does care for human beings as individuals not as an abstract mass.
I have listened to the record over and over, probably twenty times since receiving it (I procrastinated, just got it in May) and I still am enjoying it. OK, it may not be (only time will tell) VGPS and SOMETHING ELSE but it is really close.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Thank God for Ray Davies
Comment: A strong followup to his previous album, "Other Peoples Lives", gives Ray another opportunity to mine the human condition with perception, humor and empathy. While he may personally give in to solitary depression and hopelessness (as I've gathered from his interviews), his songs are always warm and optimistic, even when fondly remembering places long gone ("Workingman's Cafe") or perceiving the pain and suffering around him in an intensive care unit through a haze of painkillers ("Morphine Song"). He is one of us (albeit more talented). When he offers thanks for time shared ("Imaginary Man"), it is addressed to each of us individually.
The songs on this album are stronger, with better production than the last. I recommend it for both established Kink fans, and for those who are looking for an introduction.
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