Ray Davies - Thanksgiving Day
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CD Details
Artist: Ray DaviesEdition: Music CD
Format: EP
Published: 2005
CD Release Date: 2005-11-22
Music Label: V2 North America
Soundtracks:
- Thanksgiving Day
- Yours Truly Confused N10
- London Song
- Storyteller
- Thanksgiving Day (Alternative Mix)
Music reviews of Thanksgiving Day
Music Review: Nice Little Teaser
Rating: 4 Stars
I was very excited to see this CD EP available. As mentioned by other reviewers, the title song Thanksgiving Day will not immediately grab you a la You Really Got Me. Give it a chance and it will definitely draw you into this quintessential Ray Davies character study. On the surface, it's a happy, nostalgic tale of the annual family feast gathering so many of us grew up with and still look forward to today. But it wouldn't be a great Davies song without a somewhat sad and ironic twist. Personally, I find it very moving. It touches me in so many ways. It will illicit a wide range of emotional response for most people. I like both versions of the song though I might have a slight preference for the alternate version which is track #5. It seems to draw you in a little quicker with its choral introduction.
As for the rest of the EP, I immediately liked the 2nd song, Yours Truly Confused N10 with its big band brass swing and humorous lyric. It's got a very different sound. Nobody will confuse this song with anything previously done by The Kinks. As for the other two songs, I like Storyteller with its quiet, countrified charm. London Song doesn't really do much for me. It sounds more like an interesting experiment, but never really develops as a song. All in all, a nice little teaser for the much anticipated full CD release next February.
Description of Thanksgiving Day
British songwriting icon Ray Davies' Thanksgiving Day EP precedes the eagerly anticipated release of the ex-Kinks great's first-ever solo album, Other People's Lives, slated to land on February 7, 2006. Part of a group of songs written to express Davies' newfound desire to "discover America," the EP's title track is very much in keeping with the songwriter's famously brilliant knack for subtle character studies. Davies explains the song's inception:"After recording my first batch of demos for my solo album, I visited the U.S in 1999 and started writing more songs for the project. I had been invited to several Thanksgiving dinners in this time, one of which was with a family in New England. What struck me was that it was more like the family Christmas I enjoyed as a child growing up in London. Thanksgiving is a time for sharing and even though they throw up their eyes as though it were a chore, family members traditionally gather for a reunion at the house of the oldest relative. In the song 'Papa looks over at the small gathering' and wonders how many of the children are going to make it for the dinner. During the story, we see how one by one, they try to make it home. The Thanksgiving Day holiday was originally 'a day of unity' and it occurred to me that it might be an idea for Great Britain to adopt a similar day.""During my last visits to America I spent the last two Thanksgiving holidays in New Orleans. I noticed that for a 'party town' New Orleans is at its bleakest at this time. The particular people I was with seemed 'estranged' from their country rather than being part of it. On these occasions the 'party' was somewhere else. I started writing a Dickensian parable about a young criminal who has no family to celebrate with. I decided to take the song off my album and incorporate it into a longer musical piece for a special fund raising event for young local musicians in New Orleans. Due to recent events, this will obviously not happen in the foreseeable future. This special EP release goes part of the way to raise funds for that charity."Along with two unique mixes of the title track, Thanksgiving Day features a second new Davies composition, "Yours Truly, Confused N10," originally recorded in 2002 with Jools Holland and his Rhythm & Blues Orchestra. "I actually wrote this song for my daughter's punk band," Davies recently told the Guardian, "and they turned it down." Also included is a new mix of "London Song," a song which first saw the light of day on Davies' 1998 The Storyteller, as well as that album's title track.Strictly speaking, there's only one new song on this EP. The pounding "London Song" and gentle "Storyteller" are bonus studio tracks from 1998's music-and-spoken-word show The Storyteller, while the swinging, big-band "Yours Truly, Confused N10"--recorded with Jools Holland and His Rhythm & Blues Orchestra--originally appeared on the latter's Small World Big Band, Vol. 2: More Friends four years later. But the title track--a teaser for Ray Davies's debut solo album, Other People's Lives--is all new. Nothing like the music hall of Davies's Kinks heyday, "Thanksgiving Day" is, rather, a brassy Southern soul ballad that sounds like something off Exile on Main Street or Otis Blue. Meanwhile, Davies's gift for wistful songcraft hasn't departed him, as he tells us that on this fourth November Thursday, "A lonely spinster prays / for a handsome lover and a passionate embrace, and kisses all over her American face." If this is any indication of the full album's quality, Davies fans are in for a real treat. --Benjamin Lukoff
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