Ray Davies
Ray Davies
Working Man’s Café
(New West)
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
???
“You can take the boy out of Britain—and, apparently, a good deal of Britain out of the boy,” said Gary Graff in Billboard. As frontman of the Kinks, Ray Davies stood out as a social commentator; his satirical observations lent a wry sense of humor to songs deeply rooted in working-class England. Now the 63-year-old puts his beefs with Britain behind him to address America’s issues on Working Man’s Café. Gritty and rooted in Southern soul, this is his “most ‘American’ work” in more than 40 years, full of notes of nostalgia and pleas for reform. Davies has a particular love affair with New Orleans, said Jim Farber in the New York Daily News. This makes his perspective on the country’s state of affairs not that of an outsider but of an intimate. Politics—along with corporations, a struggling economy, and plain-old love—is his battlefield throughout the album. He gripes about globalization (“Vietnam Cowboys”), shrugs off his role as elder statesman (“You’re Asking Me”), and recalls a simpler time before strip malls and fast-food franchises (“Working Man’s Café”). Where his earlier work partly shrouded his “disillusionment in the flag of nostalgia,” these songs are hardly subtle, said Alastair McKay in Uncut. We share Davies’ concerns, but his quibbling would have “embarrassed his younger self.” He attempts a call to arms, but instead sounds like a man out of time.
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
How Zohran Mamdani's NYC mayoral run will change the Democratic Party
Talking Points The candidate poses a challenge to the party's 'dinosaur wing'
-
Book reviews: '1861: The Lost Peace' and 'Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers'
Feature How America tried to avoid the Civil War and the link between lead pollution and serial killers
-
Brian Wilson: the troubled genius who powered the Beach Boys
Feature The musical giant passed away at 82