The Kinks: Muswell Hillbillies

Between 1966 and 1971, The Kinks managed to put together six concept albums, all of them distinctive and distinguished. This was the heyday of their "English period," starting with Face to Face (enduring hits: "Dandy" and "Sunny Afternoon") and ending with Muswell Hillbillies. Overall, The Kinks contributed astute (and sometimes whimsical) lyrics and a diversity of styles to the rock and pop lexicon. They were masters of mixing humor with pain and sadness.

Muswell Hillbillies is as pertinent today as when it was first released in 1971. There must have been something in the air -- or water -- Marvin Gaye's What's Going On was released that same year and is just as relevant.

Like Marvin Gaye but with a very British tilt, Ray Davies and The Kinks were very much attuned to the world and its problems, down to the personal level (they were, after all, both tortured artists; Davies still is). The world was convulsed by Vietnam and intereconnected social upheaval; artists were sensitive to planetary poisoning and felt sick about it -- 35 years ago.

A list of the tracks gives a sense of where the Kinks stood with Muswell Hillbillies:

20th Century Man
Acute Schizophrenia Paranoia Blues
Holiday
Skin and Bone
Alcohol
Complicated Life
Here Come the People in Grey
Have a Cuppa Tea
Holloway Jail
Oklahoma USA
Uncle Son
Muswell Hillbilly

There is much yearning in this album, particularly yearning to escape the present. There's also obvious fear of the future; and many attempts to divert the existential horrors and brutality of life through madness, travel, mad-paced excercising programs, booze, hiding from "the people in grey," drinking tea as a proposed panacea, jail time, imagined flight to a romanticized USA, and finally, a mixture of defiance and fatalism. A lyrical snippet sums up the conclusion:

I'm gonna pass me a brand new resolution
I'm gonna fight me a one man revolution, someway
Gonna start my rebellion today.
But here come the people in grey, To take me away.

The CD version includes a couple of fun outtakes that didn't quite fit the underlying gravitas of the other songs: "Mountain Woman" and "Kentucky Moon."

The Kinks had been big fans of The Beverly Hillbillies; Muswell Hill is the working class suburb of London where the Davies brothers grew up.

Today's Rune: Partnership.

Cheers, then! For God's sake have a cuppa something. . . . .