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I've only had one listen so far, and I can't make my mind up. I'm not generally a fan of this heavier rock sound; I have to be in the right mood to appreciate it. So while I'm a fan of songs like "Drift Away," "Still Searching," and "Scattered," the rest of this album baffles me. I realize I should listen again tomorrow to really give it a fair shake. Maybe I'll take it for a walk on my iPod -- let it echo inside my brain.

While I was listening to this again, I kept wondering what I would have thought the Kinks were all about if, like ExKali, this had been the first album I ever heard. The sort of tracks that the vintage Kinks did best -- those short story character songs -- are particularly weak here. The more I listen to "Only a Dream" and "Don't," the more I dislike them -- they're half-baked notions, Ray does very little with them, as if he couldn't be bothered to apply any craft at all. And while I love "Still Searching" and "Scattered" -- two of Ray's loveliest melodies ever -- I don't think they really fit into the rest of the album.

What surprises me is how good the heavy rockers are. Generally this is the sort of music that bores me, but these are extraordinarily compelling. It was as if at last the album theme -- the grinding tensions of modern life -- had come together with the musical sound that they wanted to produce, and the angry, stressed-out content of his lyrics meshes perfectly with all that metallic clang and clash. Wall of Fire and Phobia are one long howl of rage, and it really works. I love how Drift Away takes his old Apeman theme of escaping modern life and kicks it up a notch -- the lyrical "drift away" bits sound desperate and faint, compared to the aggressive verses about the assault of modern society. It's as if he's losing the battle, and he knows it.

"Babies" is okay, but not good enough to get me past the weird notion of babies talking from the womb. "Somebody Stole My Car," though, really takes off from its initial premise; it's a smart "message" song with a great energetic sound.

I think "Over the Edge" and "Surviving" are a bit generic; I don't turn them off, but my mind wanders while they are playing. Maybe if they were shorter and tighter I'd like them better.

I love "The Informer." It has that wistful quality I love in "One More Time." (Does Ireland always inspire this in Ray?) I like to imagine that Ray wrote this after seeing the old John Ford movie on late-night TV, but as he was writing it, it turned into a song about him and Dave. In fact, I see most of this album as being about the brothers' struggles. Which leads us to . . . Hatred (A Duet). It's one of the best songs on the album, really fantastic -- I dig those cathartic choruses (when Ray goes high on "driven" it almost sounds like Dave!).

Dave's playing and singing are so good on this album, it's as if Ray was really trying to bring his brother back into the Kinks fold by giving him interesting things to do. Yet Dave's own two songs, It's Alright and Close to the Wire, aren't my favorites. They don't even sound like the Kinks to me. I see that Dave is trying to deal with the same topical issues as Ray is, but he doesn't say anything new about them.

I agree with DaveK -- this would have been a much stronger album if they'd pruned it down to 12 tracks.

Blog post:

Drift Away

Enjoy!

Amen!