The thing about The Kinks\u2019 late \u201970s\/early \u201980s resurgence is that while frontman\/composer Ray Davies may have given in to pressures to produce more commercial music, he never compromised his integrity; instead he re-targeted his gift for mockery from such abstract notions as English aristocracy and schoolyard life to a couple of very concrete ones: his audience, and himself. At least, that\u2019s how I do the math when a professional snark on the order of Raymond Douglas Davies titles an album Give The People What They Want<\/i>.<\/p>\n
And here\u2019s the punchline: they did. Give The People What They Want <\/i>was another in a string of hit albums for The Kinks, here featuring the same lineup as for Low Budget<\/i> (1979)\u2014Ray on rhythm guitar and vocals, brother Dave Davies on lead guitar and harmony vocals, founding drummer Mick Avory behind the kit, and Jim Rodford on bass, with the addition of touring keyboardist Ian Gibbons, previously heard on 1980\u2019s One From The Road<\/i>, as a full member. <\/p>\n
The big single here was \u201cDestroyer,\u201d in which notorious riff-pincher Davies picks his own musical pocket, taking the skeleton of his early hit \u201cAll Day And All Of The Night\u201d and dressing it up in fresh skin. That little novelty is naturally a bit of a spotlight-hog, but don\u2019t let it distract you from the fact that this is one of the boys\u2019 stronger outings from this period. \u201cAround The Dial\u201d is a suitably energetic opener, turning up the guitars on a hard-hitting rant about the death of free-form radio and the takeover of the corporate machine. The title track follows, a slamming, hooky broadside against the bread-and-circuses cravings of the band\u2019s own audience, Davies winking all the way as he condemns the very thing he\u2019s in the process of doing.<\/p>\n
The album is otherwise populated with a string of solid-to-very-good album cuts, notably witty mid-tempo numbers like \u201cKiller\u2019s Eyes\u201d and \u201cYo-Yo,\u201d and edgier rockers like \u201cAdd It Up\u201d and \u201cBack To Front.\u201d The standouts among the remainder are three.<\/p>\n
First is \u201cDestroyer,\u201d proof positive that recycling is a good thing, wherein Davies rewrites an over-the-top declaration of passion into a hard-rocking sketch of a damaged, self-destructive mind. The fact that, in another bit of recycling, it guest-stars Lola, just adds to the meta-ness of the whole exercise. <\/p>\n
Second is \u201cArt Lover,\u201d a genuinely unsettling narrative in which a grown man tries to justify his fascination with little girls on the playground as entirely innocent. For two verses it\u2019s unclear if this is a sweet song of devotion or a prettied-up cry for help from a pedophile, creating tension that\u2019s finally broken by the revelation that \u201cYou\u2019re just a substitute for what\u2019s been taken from me.\u201d So, he\u2019s simply a bereft father pining for the daughter he\u2019s lost… or is he? Either way, this song stands as proof of Davies\u2019 craft and fearlessness as a songwriter.<\/p>\n
Third is album-closer \u201cBetter Things,\u201d the single moment on this disc wherein Davies leeches the acid from his pen and delivers a sincerely optimistic and expansive anthem. It came as no surprise at all that when Davies was seeking guest stars to duet with on songs from his catalog for 2010\u2019s See My Friends<\/i> album, he invited Bruce Springsteen to sing this tune with him, and Bruce accepted. <\/p>\n
In the end, there\u2019s nothing remarkable about Give The People What They Want<\/i>\u2014how could there be, given the truth told in the title\u2014but it\u2019s a dependably solid album with flashes of brilliance from the determined, prolific, endlessly clever pen of Ray Davies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":31590,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6465],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-43295","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-the-kinks","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43295"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=43295"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=43295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}