Ray Davies – Other People’s Lives (V2 CD, 2006)

1)Things Are Gonna Change (The Morning After); 2) After The Fall; 3) Next Door Neighbour; 4) All She Wrote; 5) Creatures of Little Faith; 6) Run Away From Time; 7) The Tourist; 8) Is There Life After Breakfast?; 9) The Getaway (Lonesome Train); 10) Other People’s Lives; 11) Stand Up Comic; 12) Over My Head; 13) Thanksgiving Day

Ray Davies’s career had seemed to be winding down as The Kinks slowly but surely fell apart during the first half of the 1990s. Even though he had been around “forever” — that is, since the early sixties — it was far too early for one of the greatest songwriters of all time to be finished at the age of fifty. He reached 62 before his first proper solo album appeared. The two previous releases under his own name had consisted of a film soundtrack (with a certain amount of recycled Kinks material) and a recording of the stage show The Storyteller. One had to go all the way back to Phobia from 1993, The Kinks’ final album, to find new songs written by Ray Davies. It was good to have him back. From 2006 and over the next twelve years several releases followed. What emerged was somewhat uneven, but it certainly contained strong moments.

First there was Other People’s Lives, recorded at Konk Studios in London. It was surprising that he chose to work on home ground after spending much of his time in the United States since the mid-1970s. He had lived for a period in New Orleans, where in 2004 he was involved in a widely reported incident in which he was shot in the leg while attempting to stop a thief who had stolen the handbag of the woman he was with.

Nevertheless, Other People’s Lives bore little trace of a return to the old country. The production and songs most closely resembled Kinks releases such as Sleepwalker, Misfits and Low Budget from the late seventies. This meant well-produced, guitar-based songs rooted in an American rock tradition, without the eccentric blend of music hall and theatrical elements that had once been a trademark. One exception was Stand Up Comedian, which could have been lifted from one of The Kinks’ rock operas of the early seventies, and the wry, beautiful and nostalgic Is There Life After Breakfast?, whose spirit and themes evoked the band’s late-sixties work. At the same time, it was far removed from the hardest-edged rock material of The Kinks’ eighties output.

It was a pleasure to hear Davies as he sounded in 2006, with elegant songs in carefully crafted arrangements. Other People’s Lives focused on the essentials — Ray Davies the songwriter, storyteller and singer — in arrangements that highlighted his strengths. His voice had acquired a certain age-worn patina. It was less elastic, but the character remained intact and he was instantly recognizable. The album lacked the truly great songs he had once seemed to produce effortlessly, but all thirteen tracks maintained a solid standard and grew stronger with repeated listening. Davies clearly approached the project with enthusiasm, and the result was a good, if not classic, album. As usual, he produced it himself and demonstrated how he could age with style, without resorting to the starkly stripped-down approach heard on later albums by artists such as Neil Diamond and Johnny Cash.

The lyrics suggested that thoughts of mortality had begun to occupy Davies. That was hardly surprising, particularly in light of the shooting incident, but the fact that he was approaching retirement age likely played a role as well. Still, this was far from his only theme. He retained his gift for storytelling, staging ordinary people in a variety of situations. In the fine title track he addressed the power of the media, showing that there was still a caustic bite in his pen, while Run Away from Time — also a gem — explored the search for youth and the relentless pressure to remain relevant.

Other People’s Lives presented a Ray Davies in good form, and it was a pleasure to have him back.

Rating: 8/10