Ray Davies - Our Country: Americana Act 2

Wow, that is not what I was expecting nor what I wanted to hear.



The older he get the more he kind of looks like Vincent Price or a brother of Vincent,etc., to me .

 

I really love Karen Grotberg's vocals. In my opinion they were perfect on Act I. Does she have
much presence on the new one? The Jayhawks have been a great band backing Ray. I ordered
Act II last week.

 

She has a big presence. She has back up vocals on several songs and helps sing lead on a couple.

 

I actually bought II at Barnes and Noble but when I looked at Amazon later I noticed with interest that buying the CD was the third option listed.

First placement in their listing was
Streaming, followed by MP3, followed by the CD.

 

Thanks! I'm really looking forward to the Rayhawks!

 

...and gets to sing/talk dirty on one song!

 

You also fail to understand that Sir Ray Davies had 4 Interviews that day and you missed an exceptional Q&A which I may add was full of humour and wit. Your comment is distasteful and disrespectful. If he so happens to read your remark he would swiftly kick your ass. He will outlive many. Hope your 74th Birthday is as productive as Ray Davies who is still going strong artisticly, creatively and very much alive.

 

I agree. Fantastic album.

 

I really suspect he might have a health issue... when I hear him talking he seems "slow". Could be Parkinson... I just can't see how he can reform The Kinks and tour... and his voice is far from what it was.

 

Ray has NOT said he would go out on tour with a reunited Kinks. Ray has insisted (whenever the reunion gossip is floating around) that he wanted to work with his brother to do a new project, or work on completing some earlier unfinished material. But he was pretty strong minded in not reuniting for just a tour.

As for Ray's health, he has not toured in many years. He still suffers lingering effects from his gunshot wound, which hampers his ability to stand or sometimes sit for long periods of time. Plus he's only done very few shows in the last 5 years or so, after touring consistently for decades. So I would definitely rule out any Kinks tour, even if they do pull off a miracle and actually reunite. Maybe a small handful of shows could occur, but don't expect a full-blown tour if Ray and Dave do work again.

 

If you're looking for "rocking out" Ray, Americana is not for you. If you can enjoy a quieter, more laid back Ray, give it a try.

 

Absolutely. Contrary to an earlier commenter, I actually thought he was in fine voice. Waiting for delivery of Our Country as we speak.

 

If by 'far from what it was' you mean 'as good as ever' I agree!

 

Iam still hung up on the X Ray Book and more so the live cd where he narrates parts of it!
I will always give Raymond Douglas the benefit of any doubt.
I hope is health is holding and that he does something with Dave very soon!

 

Finally, got back home from a long vacation and could listen to Our Country: American Act II for a few weeks now.

And I must say this is a wonderful album. No, let me take that back. It's more like a dramatic play with appropriate and wonderful music accompaniment. It really works as a whole piece. Each song, when judged on its own, is fairly solid, although maybe not one single new song truly stands out as an all-time classic. BUT all the songs fit the movement and flow of the "play", and they capture the many moods and observations of Ray in this play of his. Credit too needs to be given to the Jayhawks, who keep a consistent sound throughout the album.

I also was worried when I heard that Ray was reprising some earlier songs (like Oklahoma USA, The Getaway, and The Real World) on this new album. But Ray subtlely reinterprets them, and they fit too. And when I heard some of the song previews in isolation, I thought: "Okay song. Meh. Doesn't do much for me." BUT I was wrong, since these individual songs needed to be heard within the whole.

So overall, this is one excellent album---especially if you give it a chance to sink it as a "play". Many of the Kinks previous attempts at thematic/concept albums, particularly those in the 1970s, and semi-thematic works like Think Visual or UK Jive, were scattershot, complicated, too confusing, and had weak songs that tried too hard to fit into the theme (or that's how I felt them to be, although I still enjoyed them as a long-time Kinks fan---but I saw their flaws). But with Our Country, as well as the first Americana I album, Ray has fine-tuned his ability to create cohesive and superb albums that fully match the thematic ideas. It's like Ray has finally figured out how to do it properly.

Very pleased.

 

I feel pretty blessed taking a lonely trip to New York City about a decade ago to see a friend (who was working everyday I was there so I was pretty much on my own). I just happened to see that Ray Davies was playing upstate in Poughkeepsie. I took the train, walked around what appeared to be a deserted town next to the Hudson, heard them doing a soundcheck, and saw a great show. I almost had the gall to go up to the back entrance hearing that soundcheck to see if I could meet him. I didn't though. Either way, it was a period where I needed Ray's music the most and by coincidence, there he was.

 

I would agree fully with your interpretation of 'Our Country'. There's nothing which stands out, but, as you say, as a whole, it really works. I'd go so far as to say it works better than 'Americana' as a full piece. I do wonder how it might have worked if both albums were released together, with a different tracklist, so the songs and performance pieces were more entwined with each other.

 

Agree. I found this highly enjoyable listening right the way through.

 

Finally got myself together and got this one
Together with Americans 1 I think it s Rays finest solo-work and the pairing with Jayhawks is a match in heaven
Great album