I came across someone's list of favorite albums, seemed like a good bunch: good Bowie, good Zombies, and then this one. Huh. Never heard it. I love the Face to Face/Something Else/Village Green/Aurthur arc but, for some reason, I've spent years assuming their decent output ended there. On further investigation, looks like this one, and Muswell Hillbilliesdeserve a look. First up!
It's an interesting turn, backing off of the pastoral nostalgia of Village Green and the epic scope of Aurthur, without abandoning either, and rekindling a certain early-kinks ramshackle punk attitude. It smells, by all accounts, like a farewell - a homage to the band and a fuck-you to the record industry. It sounds like a band that has stopped giving so thorough a shit - the songs aren't as carefully groomed as on the precursors, with rough edges, boisterous guitars, and more of the uncaged Davies vocals we heard on Victoria, Aurthur's raging opener.
It all reminds me a bit of Exile on Main Street, actually: there's pieces of honkytonk flair, the guitars are bluesy, the vocals a bit wrecked, the ballads mournful and rejected: the sound of a band on the outside. There's also hints of Jesus of Cool's wry sneer.
Highlights include the well-known Lola, which really does succeed in many small ways, and the jaunty, joyful, mournful, irrepressible This Time Tomorrow. I'm not moved by the (intentionally?) messy and obnoxious Moneygoround, and I'm not quite sold on Rats, which seems a bit out of place on the record. That's a great little bassline though. Otherwise, though, there's a great flow, a hint of narrative, and a great piece of structure with the bookending Got to Be Free refrains: a winning addition to my growing list of loved Kinks albums 4.5/5
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