Ray Davies - Working Man’s Café Review

Posted by Mitch Michaels on 02.19.2008

Ex-Kinks frontman returns with a gripping album of Americana…

My Story
Though the British Invasion is known for many positive things in music history, longevity is most certainly not one of them. Bands like The Animals, Herman’s Hermits and the Dave Clark Five had monster hits in the early 60’s, but none of those acts could hold it together for more than a few years. Even the vaunted Beatles could only stand each other for about a decade. Worse still, only a small number of British Invasion acts left any sort of lasting legacy. Sure, there was the Fab Four. And the Rolling Stones. But trailing just behind those heavyweights is a band who not only managed to stay united well into the 90’s, The Kinks. Granted, The Kinks are no more, but frontman Ray Davies continues to make his mark on the music industry. With his second official solo album, can Davies continue to prove that he’s a cut above the rest?

His Story
Ray Davies was born in 1944 in North London, the first son and brother to six older sisters - he later gained a younger brother, Dave, as well. In the early 60’s, Davies studied art at the Hornsey College of Arts. While Davies goal at the time was to become a theater director, music soon began to turn his head. After spending some time playing guitar for another group, Davies and his brother Dave formed their own band, eventually known as The Ravens. The Ravens scored a record contract in 1964 with the Pye label and changed their name to The Kinks.

After a rocky start, The Kinks scored big with their third single, “You Really Got Me”, which became a #1 hit in the UK and went Top 10 in the US. Their first album, also released in 1964, performed equally as well. Over the next few years, the band would go on to release several hard rocking Top 40 singles, including “All Day And All Of The Night”, “Tired Of Waiting For You”, “A Well Respected Man” and “Sunny Afternoon”. In 1968, The Kinks’ Greatest Hits was certified gold. This was particularly impressive, as the band was banned from touring the US for their first four years together. This was thought to be because of the band’s violent nature: the Kinks didn’t necessarily always get along, even on stage.

By 1967, Ray Davies had emerged as the chief singer and songwriter of the Kinks. After suffering from a nervous breakdown in 1966, Davies emerged with a triple play of classic albums. The Kinks’ Face To Face, Something Else and The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society featured a highly progressive sound, as Davies experimented with music outside of basic rock ‘n’ roll. These albums were embraced by rock critics, but the music buying public was starting to get confused. That changed in 1970 with the monster Top 10 hit “Lola”.

As the 70’s got started, The Kinks began to see their radio success drying up. Ray Davies seemed unfazed, as he continued to follow his muse through albums like the country fried Muswell Hillbillies and the soundtrack Percy, a companion to a song about a penis transplant. Reprise Records, The Kinks’ US label, refused to release the album, and tensions between The Kinks and Pye/Reprise only grew from there. In 1971, they left the labels for RCA.

In 1973, The Kinks released Preservation, a rock opera that found Ray exploring his theatrical side. This phase would continue for three more albums, each less successful than the last. This all ended when the band jumped to Arista Records in 1976. With the punk movement in full force and rock band Van Halen scoring a hit with “You Really Got Me”, the Kinks were reborn as an arena rock band and the public was quick to embrace them. For the next seven years, the Kinks enjoyed a newfound fame as the punk and new wavers cited them as huge influences. This period was highlighted by the hit gold albums Low Budget, One For The Road and Give The People What They Want, the band’s highest charting US albums since their 1964 debut. In 1982, they had a Top 10 hit with the nostalgic single “Come Dancing”. The follow-up, “Don’t Forget To Dance”, would be their final Top 40 hit.

In 1983, Ray Davies began his first real side project, a movie called Return To Waterloo, where Davies would be the primary writer and director, as well as produce the film score. Ray plunged headlong into this work, which caused tension between he and the other Kinks, as well as in his personal life. By the end of the project, he and his brother Dave were barely speaking, and his wife Chrissie Hynde (of The Pretenders) had taken their baby and left. The soundtrack to Return To Waterloo would be credited solely to Ray Davies, though its status as a “solo album” was muddied when several tracks appeared on the next Kinks record, Do It Again. Neither album was a considerable hit.

The latter half of the 80’s was a rough time for The Kinks. They were eventually dropped by Arista and, later, MCA. Their albums were no longer scoring hits, and Ray Davies continued to write about controversial subjects, including the track “Think Visual”, which scorned the very MTV generation that had led to The Kinks’ comeback. It should be noted that, during their entire existence, tensions within the Kinks led to several personnel changes, but Ray and Dave Davies remained constants, despite near constant bickering.

In 1990, The Kinks were inducted into The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame. Around that time, they started a new contract with Columbia Records, but failed to revive their career. Despite a revived interest in Davies, thanks to his partial autobiography “X-Ray” and a new influx of Britpop bands in the States, Columbia axed The Kinks after just one album. The Kinks formed their own label next, but Davies focused his interest in a solo tour dubbed “Storyteller”, where he would play acoustic version of Kinks songs and read excerpts from his book. Those shows would become the archetype for VH-1’s “Storytellers” series.

In 1996, the Kinks played their final show together before quietly disbanding. Ray Davies released an album, Storyteller, featuring live performances from his solo tour in 1998. In 2004, Davies was named an honorary Commander in the Order of the British Empire by the Queen of England. The next year, the Kinks were inducted into the UK Music Hall Of Fame.

It wasn’t until 2006 that Ray Davies would release his first official solo album, Other People’s Lives, via V2 Records. The album became Davies’ first Top 30 UK hit since his early days with The Kinks. The next year, Davies recorded a second album of solo material in Nashville, Tennessee. The material for the set was written during Davies’ most recent trip to the US, specifically New Orleans, where Davies was shot and nearly killed by a mugger.

In October of 2007, Davies released Working Man’s Café, also through V2. An estimated 1.5 million copies of the album were given away in an issue of the UK’s Sunday Times newspaper.

The Album
On February 19th, 2008, New West and Ammal Records released Working Man’s Café, the second studio solo album by Ray Davies and the follow-up to 2006’s Other People’s Lives. The album features the same tracklisting as the UK version, including both bonus tracks. The album is available on CD, vinyl and digitally, as well as in a Deluxe CD/DVD package. The Deluxe CD includes the tracks “Angola (Wrong Side Of The Law)”, “I, Victim (Rough Mix)”, “Vietnam Cowboys (demo)” and “The Voodoo Walk (demo)”. The DVD includes a short documentary, Americana – A Work In Progress, which was directed by Davies.



The Band: 7.5
Ray Davies: vocals

It seems kind of odd that New West, an alt-country flavored label, is bringing us the new album by British rock royalty, but once you hear this set, it makes perfect sense. Davies says that he set out to write this album about America (seeing as how he’s covered England quite a bit), and what you get is a definite slice of outsiders’ Americana. For his part, the 63-year old Davies does little to show his age in his vocal work. The guy avoids the raspy throated delivery that many of the 60’s rockers have devolved into now (Bob Dylan, I’m looking your way), instead giving us a performance that is as sweet and smooth as honey.

The production also adds to the Americana vibe. Producer Ray Kennedy, who has worked on excellent albums by Nashville fringe extraordinaires Lucinda Williams and Steve Earle, does a good job of capturing the Memphis via London vibe of the set. The session musicians here spot on, blending a jangly rock sound with just enough distortion to come off as both vintage and southern.

In all, Working Man’s Café is a Ray Davies that you really haven’t heard before. Though it remains anchored in 70’s Kinks style, there’s a sweetness here that is immediately endearing, providing a new frame for Davies’ signature wit and lyricism.


The Songs: 8.0
1. Vietnam Cowboys
2. You’re Asking Me
3. Working Man’s Café
4. Morphine Song
5. In A Moment
6. Peace In Our Time
7. No One Listen
8. Imaginary Man
9. One More Time
10. Voodoo Walk
11. Hymn For A New Age
12. Real World

Working Man’s Café is an album of cultural observances. Davies takes on the roll of an outsider, both captivated and perplexed by the cultural paradoxes in what is perceived as the greatest nation on earth. The album fires its warning shots with the opener, “Vietnam Cowboys”, possibly the grooviest track about global outsourcing that’s ever been written. This sentiment is brought home by the title track, as Davies observes the consumerism of western culture via its source: the mall. “We’ve really come a long way down this road/Improving our surroundings as we go/Changing our roots and culture”. The delivery of this ballad helps is both wistful and biting, something only the greats (Dylan included) are able to accomplish.

The album offers plenty in the way of nostalgic Americana. The catchy “Voodoo Walk” sounds like The Kinks’ take on John Fogerty, while “Peace In Our Time” is just as good as any saccharine 60’s love-in/protest song. On the flipside, the sweet “Imaginary Man” and the quirky piano track “Morphine” are just as good as any indie rock to come out of Britain in the last five years.

In the end, Working Man’s Café stands tall with Davies’ catalog, offering plenty of songs to chew on intellectually and to dance to. It’s just another phase in this amazing career.

The 411: Folks who dug Ray Davies’ long-in-the-works solo debut will be delighted and surprised by Working Man’s Café. Not only was the record made fairly quickly, but it truly covers some new ground for Davies. For a man whose career has spanned five decades, that’s a feat in and of itself. Better still, he’s accompanied by a great maverick Nashville band and producer that gives the material a true American spirit. The stories of American culture that Brit Davies attempts to tell on Café are necessary, captivating and entertaining.

Final Score:  8.0   [ Very Good ]