Ray Davies – Our Country: Americana Act ll (Legacy)

The former (and possibly future) Kinks front man continues his exploration of his relationship with the US where he has lived, off and on, for the past 20 years.

Anyone who is aware of Ray Davies best songs…Waterloo Sunset, Lola, Sunny Afternoon, David Watts…knows that he like to tell a good tale. And ever since The Kinks called it quits in the mid-1990s, Ray has been telling his own story, both in print and in song.

He published his “unauthorized autobiography”, X-Ray in 1994 and proceeded to tour as a solo act, reading excerpts of his book from the stage, then singing songs that corresponded to the storyline.

Then, in 2013, the elder Davies brother wrote another memoir: Americana: The Kinks, The Road And The Perfect Riff and followed that with an album of new songs written to accompany the book that was released in 2017.

That album, Americana, found Ray Davies, possibly THE quintessential English songwriter, being backed by The Jayhawks, an alt.country band from Minnesota. It turned out to be a perfect match with The Jayhawks colouring Davies’ tales of touring, working and living in the US beginning with The Kinks’ first visit in 1964.

But Ray Davies’ love affair with America was a troubled affair. The Kinks were banned from touring there during most of the 1960s (the details are still unclear) and Ray himself was shot in the leg by a mugger in New Orleans in 2004.

It seems the America Ray fell in love with…cowboys and big band jazz, early rock & roll and black & white movie stars…didn’t actually jibe with the reality of day to day life in “the land of the free”.

That tension between Davies’ perception of what America was like, viewed through the lens of a young boy from Muswell Hills and the reality of living and working in the US is captured perfectly on the first installation of Americana. The album is some of Davies’ finest work.

Too bad he didn’t leave it there.

The 19 tracks that comprise Our Country: Americana Act ll are leftovers from those initial sessions and many of them sound like it.

Of course, with a songwriter of Davies’ calibre, there are always going to be gorgeous melodies and clever lyrics.

Musically though, Ray is all over the map here. Some songs touch on pre-rock & roll pop and big band, some on blues and some on country and swing. There is some early rock & roll in there and on Calling Home, he even quotes his own Kinks klassic, See My Friends. But this musical melting pot forces The Jayhawks to sound like anything, or I should say, everything, but themselves. Often they are overwhelmed by brassy horn sections and, what sounds like a choir.

The other problem is the many spoken word segments. There were a few on the previous album, but Ray reads excerpts from his book on more than half of the songs here, sounding more like a rather boring schoolteacher than a rock and roll icon. And many of the phrases he quotes are overused clichés describing life in America.

While the first Americana album was essential listening for anyone with even a passing interest in Ray Davies or The Kinks, this new instalment is for completists only.

Marty Duda