Ray Davies - Other People's Lives
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CD Details
Artist: Ray DaviesEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2006-02-21
Music Label: V2 North America
Soundtracks:
- Things Are Gonna Change
- After The Fall
- Next-Door Neighbour
- All She Wrote
- Creatures Of Little Faith
- Run Away From Time
- The Tourist
- Is There Life After Breakfast?
- The Getaway (Lonesome Train)
- Other People's Lives
- Stand Up Comic
- Over My Head
- Thanksgiving Day
Music reviews of Other People's Lives
Music Review: Lend an Ear To Other People's Lives
Rating: 4 Stars
After all the utter disappointments since first hearing the finishing burnishes were being applied to Ray Davies' long-awaited solo album, only to have the release pushed back yet another year, it's finally here! While one can bemoan that The Kinks will probably never again record together, the everyday world still percolates through Davies' singular songwriting and manifests itself quite nicely in Other People's Lives.
The opening two songs, "The Morning After" and "After the Fall", are the complementary confessionals of a man with all-too-human failings. The two songs' common line, "When morality kicks in....", seems consummate. What direction life will take him is less important than how he'll be able to handle the inevitable changes a new day will bring. As is usual, Davies ultimately takes a positive tack: "When the mist clears, the sun will shine again." Gotta love it.
"Next Door Neighbors" is a wonderfully casual ditty concerning three disparate individuals whom the musing narrator supposedly knew just as casually. Any of them could be one of us. The jaunty rhythm and rosy sentiments end in a quiet fade conveyed with a tinge of caring uncertainty, letting us know there's at least one person out there who's thinking of us, someone of whom we wouldn't immediately think.
"All She Wrote" is the album's only all-out pop-rocker -- a crackling Dear John lyric written to a supposed cad of a man (the narrator) whom she couldn't come to be with in spite of herself. Great air guitar tune, and I'd be curious to see that "big Australian barmaid"!
"Creatures of Little Faith" is a rather non-descript slow-dance ballad with an apologetic lyric sung in the Davies heartfelt manner. He writes in his liner notes that it was probably written by the same guy in the previous song. Okay. A noirish solo sax adds to the aura here.
"Run Away From Time" sounds like a Kinks song from the '80s, perhaps a la their album Word of Mouth, which is a "good" thing. A catchy refrain helps a lot here.
"The Tourist" is an ambling, lazily sung reportage with a dynamite grunge guitar explosion marking the first bridge and the conclusion, and there's a neat high-pitched chorus in the middle.
"Is There Life After Breakfast?" is one of my favorite tunes here -- can't get that catchy chorus out of mind! This is the one I'm waking up singing. Davies plays and sings with that comical hung-over posture one remembers from The Kinks' "operatic" days.
"The Getaway (Lonesome Train)" rings of Neil Young and Mark Knopfler throughout -- the most derivative of the songs here, but a most mysterious and listenable one as well.
"Other People's Lives" has another mysterious vibe with a Latin female backing vocal and a lyric skewering overzealous media. I like the sentiment, which Davies has tackled in the past, but it's really a strange, cynical tune; one that's difficult to embrace. It's probably this reviewer's least favorite song on the album.
"Stand Up Comic" is another strange tune with Ray half-reciting/half-singing a rapid-fire lyric describing a performer's tete-a-tete with his audience, wisecracking on the state of modern culture as he goes along. I like the chorus, however, which is sung with conviction and smacks of personal meaning. What that meaning is is best left for others to decide.
"Over My Head" is another favorite song on the album. Its gentle intro leads to a lyric explanatory of a past broken relationship, followed with an irresistable refrain melodically reminiscent of Stevie Wonder's "I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever)" then into something completely original.
The album concludes with "Thanksgiving Day", another ambling tune with an interesting Londoner's take on that most American of annual institutions. The full vocal choir added to the refrain is a nice touch. However, I doubt the tune will ever be thought of as a classic paean to American traditions.
Overall, Other People's Lives is a welcome addition to the oeuvre of one of modern pop music's great songwriters. Davies makes a reiterative point in the liner notes that the songs shouldn't be thought of as autobiographical. Hopefully, longtime fans have gotten past that by now. The songs and performances are indicative of a musical artist entering his senior years with learned dignity, not of an elder statesman trying to relive past glories. Tempos are generally lax; the production is slick and mannered. The album does indeed grow on one with each subsequent listening, a quality one may consider the mark of a keeper for fans as well as the uninitiated.
Description of Other People's Lives
Japanese only SHM-CD (Super High Material CD - playable on all CD players) pressing includes one bonus track. Universal. 2008.As the leader of one the most vital and volatile bands of the British Invasion, Ray Davies may also have been one of the genre's most underappreciated, often playing second fiddle to the likes of Lennon, McCartney, and Jagger, but never failing to reignite the flame on a now-legendary songwriting caldron. More than a decade since the Kinks' last release, Davies makes his virgin foray into solo artistry with 13 songs that reverberate with the wistfulness and introspection that have forever been his trademark. It doesn't take long to detect, as the guitar/bass crescendo and tomorrow-will-be-better lyrics make "Things Are Gonna Change (The Morning After)" a singalong halfway through its 4:21. And then the world once again is put under Davies's uncanny surveillance: his pal Mr. Brown in the country-singed "Next Door Neighbour," "The Tourist" hobnobbing in New Orleans (where Davies makes an American home), and eras of lost acquaintances in "All She Wrote," a Kinks-ish acoustic rocker. They are reminders of what we've missed--and hopefully what's yet to come--from a remarkable artist whose return is undoubtedly being celebrated from the streets of a restored Big Easy to the barstools of Muswell Hill. --Scott Holter
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