Oh Arthur, where to begin. When I first got the Sancturary CD for my 16th birthday in 2011 like most of the Kinks albums I got, this one didn't hit me right away. It's clear these albums are meant to be digested, and nowhere is that clearer than on this fantastic album. I think this was partly going from the incredibly uptempo and joyous Victoria into the initially drab Ys Sir, No Sir, and then Some Mother's Son. I was expecting something more driving (pun unintended), but that's not what I got here. Now I absolutely adore these two tracks, along with the rest of the album for many, many reasons. This album is fantastic. I've often said it's my favourite Kinks album, though obviously I've also said the same about Something Else, VGPS & Lola, but I'm sure we've all run into this dilemma. As a graduate in History, the references throughout are lyrical ear candy for me, and the sound of the album is... just delicious. Everyone is instrumentally (that drum fill especially the room sound in the right channel, on Marina) and vocally on point (those backing vocals in the last 1/3 of Victoria are just pure addiction), and Ray's songs meet the criteria perfectly. Others will cover what makes this album so great in deeper detail, but I wanted to make sure my passion for it was heard. And honestly, is Shangri-La Ray's crowning achievement in an all encompassing composition? If the original stereo mix didn't convince you, the (alternate stereo mix) on the SDE by Sandoval should do. With that distortion free and the separation even stronger, it's basically all I bought the box for. That said, there's a minor slump on side 2. Nothing to Say isn't amazing, but I always enjoy it, but Young and Innocent Days just drags to these ears.
Arthur was one of my first new Kinks album purchases at my local Caldor's after VGPS. My brother actually had the 8 track version, but I had no player. I was familiar with some of the songs already as they were on Kronkiles and Everyone's In Show Biz. I must have originally obtained it around Thanksgiving because I have this odd habit of always playing it on Thanksgiving. Anyway, it's a great Kinks album, one of the best sounding of their albums. What I'm looking forward to in discussing Arthur is how my fellow Avids, especially the Aussie & Brit ones (& in the case of our Dear Leader, a three country emigrant) relate to its songs. As the children of emigrants myself, I sort of understand, but their experiences cut more to the bone, if I should say so.
Not the ultimate amateur, but likely the ultimate in understatement. Whatever his political stock in the band may have been, the man could play. Along with Mick Avory, Quaife literally drove the sound of this group with his playing. Creating bass lines that were melodic and rhythmically complex, Quaife seemed to know how to deliver what each song called for, in a way that was simultaneously astounding and unobtrusive. How different things might have been if he had stayed in the group -- but true enough, one often doesn't realize what they have until it is gone. Ray and Dave's songs might have been the fuel in the Kinks' gas tank, but Quaife and Avory were the engine that made that vehicle move.
If you guys are going to quote that sketch, might as well put the whole thing up. Actually, it's not really a Monty Python sketch. It was originally down for the At Last the 1948 Show w/the great Marty Feldman as seen below. The Pythons dusted it off & put it in Live at the Hollywood Bowl:
Arthur is the biggest Kinks mystery, as far as I’m concerned (along with Low Budget, exactly 10 years later). I mostly don’t recognize the band from the previous records. Pete Quaife is gone, Rasa’s scarcely heard, Nicky Hopkins is lost in action, replaced by a much more anonymous harpsichord player, Ray’s voice(s) and style have changed dramatically. The sound’s heavier, there’s almost no whimsical little whistling tunes, no birds singing, no fat cats in the trees… Yet, I don’t recognize the band from the next records either. The Lola richness of sound and piano tunes, Muswell Hillbillies New-Orlean-isms, both their takes on what wasn’t yet called Americana… There’s nothing of the sort on Arthur, as far as I can tell. My first exposure to the Kinks was buying Village Green and Lola the same night. Instant passion. Lifelong commitment. My next move was, logically, to get Arthur a few days later, looking for more of… either of them, really. And except maybe for Drivin’ (a follow up to Starstruck) and Some Mother’s Son (a melodic precursor to some Lola ballads), it’s utterly different from both ! Good, great, but nothing like I was hoping it to be. To this day, it has suffered from that first exposure to it and not being what I expected at all. It's an album that still kind of eludes me. Of all the Kinks records, it's the one I listen to the less – or the less spontaneously. I’ve never even been able to choose between mono or stereo as my go to mix (I love having it in my big mono box, even though the stereo mix seems clearly superior). It’s not that I don’t like it, but I’ve failed to make it mine, maybe also because there aren't as many personal favorite standalone tunes on it as on any of the three LP’s that precede it (Face/Else/Green), or the three that come after (Lola/Muswell/Showbiz). But that’s what song by song threads are for, aren’t they? Reexaminations. Rediscoveries. Moments of truth… As usual, I've refrained to listen to the album prior to our deep dive here. That’s why I’m so anxious to get to it, with you guys and girls. Couldn’t hope for a better companionship to do that.
Arthur: this is where I find the quality of the recording really picks up in the Kink's discography (as relative as that may be); it's much easier to consistently pick out individual instruments, vocals etc. from Arthur onwards. Were they still recording in Pye's second studio? Had the equipment been upgraded? Whatever, I find for this reason alone, Arthur is a refreshing listen after the Kinks' prior albums. And Mick shines on this record. His drumming is stellar on so many of the songs here.
I reckon this is spot on. This is another major similarity to Pink Floyd's the Wall. This is like a self contained unit within the Kinks catalog. It doesn't completely line up with anything else, though it has individual aspects that infer to other albums. It isn't an album of possible hits. It doesn't really have much in the way of Waterloo Sunsets, or Sunny Afternoons.... Victoria is a great track that has single whispered, rather than screamed from its grooves. Just like The Wall, it is self contained, and seems to cause division amongst fans. I think this is one of the Kinks most interesting albums, from those perspectives. The diversity of the band's output is making them even more appealing to me.... it's something I cherish.
I believe they were, though Pye's Studio 2 had recently gotten an upgraded transistorized mixing desk, which might account for the different sound. I do seem to recall Arthur having lost the upper midrange peakiness of earlier Pye recordings, and having taken on a bit more weight in the lows and low mids.
I can understand this - perhaps the "lull" I had with Arthur for many years was due to the fact that I'd now heard almost all the other albums, and most of those somehow seemed easier to digest than Arthur, which demands your full attention for over 45 minutes. Hearing my old vinyl copy at a previously unheard level of quality was the spark that made me appreciate it all over again. And as for standout tunes - well, it's easy to see for example "Shangri-La" as a great work, perhaps one of Ray's greatest, but for me it's still just a part of the album, and the strength is in the album as a whole. I probably wouldn't want to play any of these tracks outside the context of the album.
Great post hitting on a lot of things that make this album so singular in the discog. As the only LP by the 'still a 4-piece but with Dalton' line up, it's a transitional moment between the 'miniature pop masterpiece artisans' 1966-early 69 phase and the 'US tour hardened horns assisted 5 piece good ol boozy showboys' post Lola phase. Also good spot on the significance of the membership changes around this time: it's not just Pete Quaife that's gone, essentially half of The Kinks regular studio personnel is cut around this point, with PQ, Hopkins and (a little later, but already fading fast) Rasa all exiting stage left around the 1969 time frame. It's no wonder the records started to sound so different so rapidly: leaving Pye in house premises to record at Morgan by the following year would be another nail in the sarcophagus for the 60s Kinks sound.
I grew up in the literal boondocks, but in 1971, my brother went off to college in Cambridge, Mass. So, because I searched for Arthur to no avail all over the US South, I talked him into looking for it at the Coop. Success! But I had to wait for his Christmas break to see it when he came home. I will never forget tearing off the shrink wrap and seeing the amazing inside art (see above). But the music itself completely astounded and impressed me, for reasons Mark eloquently gave in his post here. It still does.
Arthur Until this year, this is an album I wasn't too familiar with. I have a special connection with Victoria - besides it long being a top favorite Kinks song, I have a daughter named Victoria. We used to sing the song to her as we tried to get her to sleep as a baby. A little "inappropriate"...it's not really a lullaby is it? HA So getting ready for the review of this album I've been listening to it and gradually falling in love. I went in thinking this may not capture my heart. There were some songs that I initially said "skip" (ie Australia), but then gave a few more listens and I am wow-ed. It's a different sort of love than say my feelings toward VGPS or Lola, but it's still new to me. so it's not a mature love just yet. So bring on Arthur...let's go drivin'.
I checked the booklet of the 2011 deluxe edition & Arthur was recorded in Pye Studio No. 2, which is interesting since it does sound different from previous Kinks albums.
Someone oughta post the big gatefold picture of the smiling kangaroo in boxing gloves (which represents Australia, of course, though at first it just perplexed me, because I thought it was some sort of delighted fat fox or rat). I thought the setting sun with red white and blue beams was itself some sort of flag, but I think it's just the sun finally setting on the Britsh Empire. (Yes, very Terry Gilliam-esque!) I find myself perplexed by Arthur in a way similar to a few of the prior posts. It suffers in my mind from being the followup to what may be my favorite album and year of recordings by any band, of any era, ever. It also suffers from not being the album I presumed it _had_ to be -- namely, the double-album repository of every Kinks song on Kronikles that wasn't on the other albums from 1966-1970. Where was Polly? Dead End Street? Autumn Almanac? Surely these were part of the Arthur concept and its grand story? I agree that the record flags or lags a bit during side two. I wonder if that's a bit of a sequencing problem -- "Shangri La" is such a grand, epic statement, but it feels like Ray himself has "Nothing to Say" shortly after arriving there (ok, that's overstating things but I couldn't resist). So perhaps "Shangri La" should have appeared closer to the end.... Except that it might have felt like a bit of a slog to get there if Ray had done that. The scale of the story is deliberately tiny, mundane, so it's unfair to compare it to the wild ride that's Tommy -- which feels like it can't even cram it's whole story into a double album. But in this most recent listening, I do wish there were a bit more of a dramatic payoff in some way. I don't get a sense of any character arriving at any further epiphany or breakthrough near the album's end -- not even something like Priscilla's breakthrough in "Two Sisters." Does Arthur have any sort of tragic breakdown or break-open, externally or internally, over the geographical breakup of his family? What's going on in him? I find myself wanting him to howl in some way, but that would be terribly un-English, right? Well, then, how about dramatically failing to shed a tear that he needs to, a la "Remains of the Day?" This may be me imposing something on the album that it didn't set out to do, and I think that may be unfair. Of course the album's songs were supposed to support a TV play. It's possible/likely that they were sequenced differently, and/or the play itself might have supplied some extra drama. I've yet to hear the recent radio play reconstruction of Arthur. How faithful is it to the TV script? Now that I've expressed my reservations and resistance to the album -- I gotta say that it contains at least 4 tracks that are phenomenal, and possibly THE culmination of much of what Ray had been doing since 1966. Also, that my old songwriting partner loves Arthur the way I love VGPS, and wrote his own folk-rock opera about a middle-aged Colorado mom in response to it.
Arthur is actually the first Kinks album I bought. I loved their singles and would hear them all the time on the radio (on early/mid 80s classic rock) and of course I loved all their current stuff at the time too. But rather than buying State of Confusion, I picked up Arthur because it had 2 songs that I knew I wanted: "Victoria" which was played constantly on WSHE during their Psychedelic Sundays and "Yes Sir, No Sir" which I knew from what was a favorite movie of mine back then... Mad Magazine's Up the Academy.
I didn’t know that either. There’s also a great alternative version from 1979 - filmed at the Secret Policeman’s Ball charity show - in which Rowan Atkinson joins three Pythons. Funnily enough only one of them is actually a Yorkshireman - Michael Palin. The others do very good efforts.
Not at all, unfortunately.. I mean, tbf it's not trying to be, but essentially the 2019 radio play is a 'new' story based more directly on Ray's experiences growing up and the real Arthur than Julian Mitchells 1969 script would have been. It's yet another latter day Ray concept that amounts to a very lightly fictionalized retelling of an excerpt from his own memoirs, a well he's gone to too often in recent years for me to get very excited about. In particular the fact that the story is moved to the 50s/60s dilutes the power of the war era songs, which don't make as much sense repurposed for later less dramatic chapters in history .. for instance, AFAIR 'Yes Sir, No Sir' becomes about the job Arthur gets in Aus, not really as compelling a scenario as it's original WW1 setting to put it mildly. Despite what I said above, as far as I can see critical response from both fans and commentators was on the whole pretty positive so your mileage could well vary. Definitely still worth checking out, esp as the only realised dramatisation of the album.
Wow! I had no idea that such a deep cut appeared in a Mad affiliated project! I wonder how that came about? How is the song used in the film? This thread is a daily education, I swear.
Yes, I have a number of ho-hummers-skippers and Australia was one. Then just recently had the same reaction as you. side note: singing Victoria as a lullaby. Very humorous. I have this image of your baby girl just drowsing off and then you hit the chorus, “Victoria! Victoria!” and she’s immediately awake again.
!! I guess not. All this year I’ve been binge-reading the Inspector Ian Rutledge series which is set in the immediate aftermath of WWI (and delves into it quite a bit). I then decided I should explore further and am halfway through the excellent ‘A World Undone: The Story of the Great War.”
Images of Studio 2 are hard to come by, but I have seen one that may show the upgraded console that Arthur was tracked on. It is not the older Neumann/home brew console used in the early-to-mid-60s. This is likely one reason for the audible change in sound.
