Music Review: Ray Davies - Working Man's Cafe

Delving into a new Ray Davies always gives me the shakes. I want so badly to loveitloveitloveit – but will this be the time he finally lets me down?

Mind you, Working Man’s Café is technically only Ray Davies’ third album. Other People’s Lives, released in February 2006, was his studio solo debut; there was also a live show recorded as Storyteller. But as front man for the Kinks – lead singer, songwriter, producer, and all-around dramaturge—Ray Davies has been releasing records for over 40 years. You’d think by now he’d be on autopilot.

But now I’ve heard Working Man’s Café, and I can breathe easy—no such thing has happened. That old chip on Ray Davies’s shoulder is still there, driving him to overachieve, to settle imaginary scores, to baffle all critics.

Other People’s Lives was a brilliant debut – a searingly honest mid-life stock-taking, suffused with fury, melancholy, grit, and vulnerability—but Working Man’s Café is a much more confident, robust outing. Davies is back in vintage form, once again playing the detached observer of life and love, adroitly sampling a pastiche of musical styles, and dealing out his cards of satire and sympathy with a practiced sleight of hand.

Known as the chronicler par excellence of British social life, on Working Man’s Café we find Davies taking stock of British culture circa 2007—and concluding that there is no such thing.

After a dramatic opening guitar riff straight out of the movie The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, the snappy opening track, “Vietnam Cowboys,” pans around the globe to find a fatal blurring of cultural identities, a cold-hearted outsourced global economy of “Mass production in Saigon / While auto workers laid off in Cleveland.” (True, I don’t think of Cleveland as a town of auto workers, but it’s like John Belushi’s Animal House rant about the Germans bombing Pearl Harbor – don’t stop him, he’s on a roll).

Davies brings it home to the U.K. in the title track, as he pictures himself walking down a High Street full of Starbucks and Gaps, looking in vain for the old café where old geezers on the dole could swill tea. Far from savage satire, it’s a classic bit of Daviesian nostalgia, a deeply poignant farewell to Englishness, and Davies’ hushed, husky vocals strike the perfect tone.

As a satirist, frankly, Davies is always sharper when the grudge is personal – like in “No One Listen,” a punchy diatribe against the bureaucratic process. It’s clearly drawn from Davies own 2004 experience after being shot by a mugger in New Orleans, the howl of frustration in his voice echoed by a snarly electric guitar.

The thoroughly charming “Morphine Song” is a music-hall-tinged bit of absurdist comedy which Davies wrote during an extended hospital recovery after the shooting. With its female back-up chorus and horn section, the sound harks back to Preservation – not only the Kinks’ mid-'70s rock operas of that name but also the jazz hall in New Orleans.

Despite its John Lennon-like title and Neil Young-ish arrangement, the track “Peace In Our Time” has nothing to do with the war in Iraq—no, it’s a domestic battleground Davies is complaining about: “the living room’s a wreck from all the rows / The atmosphere is stifled with aggression / Ultimatums, deadlines, and depression.” As usual, he manages to make himself out to be more sinned against than sinning. (Note to self: never break up with someone in person, just write a devastating rock song and your revenge will be complete.)

Article Author: Holly Hughes

Holly A Hughes has been a rock 'n roll fan since February 9, 1964. She's heard it all, on vinyl, cassettes, 8-track tapes, CDs, and mp3 files. But so long as it's got a good beat, she'll dance to it.

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