The photo of Ray Davies that adorns the front of his album, Working Man's Cafe, is perfectly fitted to the bittersweet content and the sardonic wit of this former Kinks frontman. There's Ray, half-smiling, half-frowning, his reflection caught in a window. Or maybe that's a grimace, a wink, a kind of challenge to the buyer that "you're gonna love this music, and you'll hate it too." But no, I really like this record. It's witty, sweet at times, wistful and nostalgic, melodically strong, often rocking, and always interesting.
I first heard the Kinks in high school, about 1973, the melodic, jangly "Lola" blasting out my inexpensive Zenith record player. You know, "la-la, la-la Lo_la, e-o-le-e-Lo_la." I didn't know until later that Lola was a transvestite. In fact, I think Ray may have been a factor in my education on that point. But in the coming year, I worked my way through the Kinks catalog, like Muswell Hillbillies, where Ray sings "I'm a twentieth century man but I don't wanna be here." (He still doesn't.) Or there's the out-of-space-out-of-time alienation of "Acute Paranoia Schizoprenia Blues," or that lovely critique of the social service busy-bodies in "Here Come the People In Gray" who "are gonna take me away to Lord knows where."
But whereas Muswell Hillbillies is a social commentary on working class woes in North London, Working Man's Cafe reveals Ray's ambivalence about American culture, a wry bit of commentary from a now over 60 rock star. For example, the lead-off song, "Vietnam Cowboys," finds Ray lamenting the homogenization that flows from globalization, not in any heavy-handed or fully conclusive way (and thus, not shrill or propagandistic) but rather simply pointing out the ironies. Like "Cowboys in Vietnam making their movies," or hamburgers in China and sushi bars in Maine. He picks up that wistful theme in the title cut, "Working Man's Cafe," when he says "Everything around me seems unreal/ Everywhere I go it looks and feels like America/ We've really come a long way down the road." The alienation surfaces again in "The Real World" in the observation that "everything looks the same the whole world over now," with Ray wondering "where is the real world?"
There's echoes of Muswell Hillbillies as well in "No One Listens," where Ray laments the inefficiency and inhumanness of bureaucracy: "Now I'm stuck here in the system/ They ain't gonna listen, nobody listen/ they ain't gonna listen to me." But the most intimate plea, the focal point of Ray's cry for meaning is found in "Hymn for a New Age," where, after saying what he doesn't believe --- that "God is a man with white hair/ sitting in a big chair/ judging the world and its morals/ Forgiving today so we can sin again tomorrow" --- he admits to the honesty of "I need something to connect to/ Someone to help me through/ Something I can pray to" and says "We need a hymn/ I believe/ I need something to look up to/ I believe I wanna pray but don't know what to." Ray Davies speaks for all who recognize the God-shaped vacuum in their hearts, the empty place needing filling, and at 62 he probably recognizes that all he has tried thus far won't fill it up. As other songs on the album make clear, human remedies don't seem to suffice. Morphine may dull the pain ("Morphine Song"), human love is temporal ("Peace In Our Time"), and idealistic visions of who we are will disappoint ("Imaginary Man"). Ray Davies needs a new hymn. A lot of us do.
Musically, this album is always interesting and more memorable than last years Other People's Lives. From the rollicking faux-country of "Vietman Cowboys" to the Kinks-like British-rock of "You're Asking Me" to the ballad "Working Man's Cafe" and rock of "Hymn for a New Age," Ray keeps it interesting. It's really just the Kinks, oozing out of Ray Davies.
I recommend the Limited Edition CD/DVD set of this record. It includes four bonus cuts which are worth having, as well as a video of ray's 2001 tour of America, a home movie set to the music of "Working Man's Cafe" and an interesting piece given that he was on the road just after 9/11 and was able to witness eerily quiet airports, for example. Buy the record here. Listen to "Hymn for a New Age" here:
