Ray Davies – Other People’s Lives V2 VVR1035352 (2006)
Hey, an old guy making a rock album. Get me out of here! This kind of lends support to the truism that rock and roll is a young person’s game. There are a few rock songwriters/performers who can successfully work into middle age and beyond (Lou Reed). Ray Davies, Elvis Costello, The Rolling Stones and so many others are not among those few. For those who don’t know, Davies was the principle songwriter of The Kinks, penning songs that had the trappings of rock counterculture but with lyrics that were surprisingly politically conservative, of a kind of right-leaning populism. His version of counterculture was passed by long ago and this pathetic batch of songs is dreadful.