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Cloudland Revisited: the Kinks
Sep. 23rd, 2013 11:15 am This is actually a side trip to somebody else's cloudland, because as far as I'm concerned the 1960s and 1970s happened to somebody else. (There were books. All else was irrelevant.)
I have just discovered The Kinks. Of course I knew "Lola" and "Come Dancing": IIRC the former shocked me when I was a young thing, which just goes to show.) But I've spent the last week or so grinding a pixel-dragon game, and I needed a soundtrack. I started running through the British Invasion -- the Animals, the Zombies, like that. Then I came to the Kinks, and suddenly I had to keep the Youtube window open and pay attention. The two things that blew me away were the intelligence of the lyrics and their essential kindness. The speaker feels sympathy, or at least empathy, for the twentieth-century man, the narrator in "Lola", the grandmother in "Cuppa Tea", the lonely observer in "Waterloo Sunset"*. The songs don't punch down; they punch sideways. This essential sweetness doesn' t keep the band from rocking out; far from it. In live performances, Ray Davies sings with a singularly sweet smile; I don't know if it's love for what he's doing or a performer's correction for a tendency to sing flat. See Joan Sutherland's habitual singing face.
I've ordered "The Village Green Preservation Society" and more will follow; I don't think the Greatest Hits album will come close to satisfying me.
* Which American TV entirely omitted from the Olympic Closing Ceremony. I ask you.
I have just discovered The Kinks. Of course I knew "Lola" and "Come Dancing": IIRC the former shocked me when I was a young thing, which just goes to show.) But I've spent the last week or so grinding a pixel-dragon game, and I needed a soundtrack. I started running through the British Invasion -- the Animals, the Zombies, like that. Then I came to the Kinks, and suddenly I had to keep the Youtube window open and pay attention. The two things that blew me away were the intelligence of the lyrics and their essential kindness. The speaker feels sympathy, or at least empathy, for the twentieth-century man, the narrator in "Lola", the grandmother in "Cuppa Tea", the lonely observer in "Waterloo Sunset"*. The songs don't punch down; they punch sideways. This essential sweetness doesn' t keep the band from rocking out; far from it. In live performances, Ray Davies sings with a singularly sweet smile; I don't know if it's love for what he's doing or a performer's correction for a tendency to sing flat. See Joan Sutherland's habitual singing face.
I've ordered "The Village Green Preservation Society" and more will follow; I don't think the Greatest Hits album will come close to satisfying me.
* Which American TV entirely omitted from the Olympic Closing Ceremony. I ask you.
