My continuing quest to shore up the holes in my Kinks' experience.
This is such a cheat, when I first started to review this I wrote:
This might be the end of it. This was the last of their remotely-well-regarded albums I hadn't heard, and it didn't wholly blow me away.
But then I set it aside for a week, and in the midst of a second listen, I'm much more impressed. It's almost like first-impression review's aren't the most valid form around.
I still definitely don't like this as much as any of the previous big-4-or-so, and it's not even up there with Lola/Powerman, but it has it's charms. Speaking of Lola, if that album was Exile on Mainstre-y, this one is doubly so, mimicking Exile's more stripped-down half, down to the delta blues slide, down to the buzzrattle acoustic spine, down to the roadworn vocals. It is a distinctly American album, which is odd given how obsessively British these guys were just a few albums ago, and how much they clearly inspired britpop like Blur: even here you can hear future echoes of Parklife in tracks like Complicated Life.
The album, I think, throws you off the trail with a dismal 2-3 punch of Holiday and Skin & Bone, but the next few songs are rich, nuanced, and soulful to spare.
It's an odd bird, reminding me somehow of The King of Limbs (an album it sounds nothing like) in the way that it so fully embraces a style flirted with by its predecessors, resulting in something largely unrecognizable to a longtime follower. I don't see this working for me in the long term: if I want the grit I'll go Exile, if I want the pop genius, I'll go earlier Kinks. But it's an interesting one 3.5/5
You might like this if: you like americana-tinged britpop, and need something slightly adventurous, but downhome simple and light. Contradictions abound.
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I think you need to give it a little more time...eventually it will sink in just how great "Muswell Hillbillies" is. And by the way, it doesn't mimic anything about "Exile on Main Street" -- it came out in 1971, a full year before "Exile"...
ReplyDeleteYeah, I totally get that actually, even the gap between the first and second listens was striking. I'll try to give it more of a chance. This is the downside of writing these after first listens.
ReplyDeleteMaybe "mimic" was the wrong word, I didn't mean to imply that the kinks cribbed the sound, but that to my hearing-exile-first ear, it sounded similar, though I didn't actually do the research to see which came out first.
Anyway, thanks for the comment!
ps, just clicked over - great blog
ReplyDeleteThanks for taking a look and commenting...always good to get feedback. And by the way, I used to live in Somerville for many years...really enjoyed Christopher's restaurant (noticed on your other blog).
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