The Kinks: Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygroround — Part One

WELL, ALL RIGHT. It took two months but I think I begin to understand the meaning of this album, which is that the Kinks understand, too. Potentially, they are the only British rockers who do, or the only ones who do that are willing to own up to the fact. Indeed, Ray Davies has always been peculiarly relevant to the American aesthetic, at the same time being so idiosyncratically British that it can get terrifying. (Like when 'Waterloo Sunset' and the like threatened to send the band off the edge into pretty-boy dreck, a la the decline in viscera that characterizes the downfall of the Pretty Things and later-day Zombies.)