Well guessed! Yes, to me, this is the most beautiful song on the record, one of the great unsung (but so beautifully sung!) Ray Davies ballads. The chorus is just sublime, perfect soft rock fare, exquisite sugar coated beauty. But this time, I'll agree with @The late man, the verse is even better, so delicate and charming, silky and cotton-like, you could melt and dissolve in it. I think that’s the whole concept of the song, in contrast with the sleepless previous one: the lyrics are about the storm ahead, the threatening sky above, almost apocalyptic like in Rainy Day in June (or There’s A Change in the Weather) but the music is here to give us shelter and keep the storm outside. Even during the chorus, when we almost hear the big winds flowing, or in the guitar heroics lightning storm in the last section, there’s no immediate danger, no overwhelming worry, you can still feel safe wrapped in the arms of the loved one, waiting for the new appeased morning to rise. Weather songs are indeed often metaphoric, and in the live Old Grey Whistle Test version, Ray does acknowledges it being "another weather song, like Waterloo Sunset and Sunny Afternoon". But to my ears, like in those epochal klassiks, the metaphor takes the back seat and leaves the actual story upfront : just a little couple hiding in a cocoon of warmth. The sky is bad, we need shelter, and the music provides one for them, and to the listener. You don’t get much more beautiful, sensual and tender than this.
This doesn't sound like the Kinks either but at least it's a good song. The arrangement is too bland though.
I'm with @stewedandkeefed in having mixed feelings about this song. I actually like it for all the reasons @Mark has outlined so well. The music is beautiful and Ray's vocals sound great. But I feel guilty about liking it because it reminds me somewhat of the Little River Band with it's super-smooth delivery. I also feel guilty about liking several LRB songs even though (I hasten to add) I don't own any of their albums. I think a whole album of this could drive me mad but this song, planted where it is on this album, really works for me. I'll croon along with Ray when it plays. The live version is my preference though. I really laughed at this post. @Smiler is onto something. Even when there are songs I don't like that much it's always a pleasure to read the comments because they invariably draw on so much more than a dry discussion of the song. It's more like a well-informed boozy discussion among friends at the pub.
I find this track a bit too soft rock for my tastes. I can hear that it's well written and well played, but it just doesn't grab me. Fortunately, tomorrow's song is much better!
As I said in my previous comment, I like this song a lot too. I also thought it was about [in Fortuleo's words] " a little couple hiding in a cocoon of warmth" from the evils of the world outside, but of course Mark's explanation makes much sense. So this would be the beginning of the story the end of which Elton John and Bernie Taupin told us a few months before in their epic song "Tonight". Sometimes I think that I can take a mellow soft-rock sound easier when it comes from a British act. Perhaps the Joan of Arc in me knows that they cannot be that mellow really.
"Stormy Sky" Mellow, man. This seems a bit more like a penultimate track on an album to me. It's nice enough but I don't find much to remember about it, and it's the track that most often passes me by. I can't really find a lot to write about this one! It may share some things in common with previous Kinks "weather" songs, but to me it's closer lyrically to one that arrives a decade later - "Lost And Found".
Does the opening lyric and mood remind anyone else of 'Here Comes The Sun'? Similar feelings to @stewedandkeefed and @Steve62 for me for this one. Beguiling melody and construction, but it sounds SO smoooooooooth radio taking you into the mid afternoon and we'll have the traffic report on just after this, especially the 'it's only a stormy sky' chorus which never mind that retrospectively coined term Yacht Rock, could be The bleedin' Lighthouse Family (this name will prob only mean much to UK residents!) for how daytime drive it sounds! Like the last track, I appreciate it as a byway in the long view of the groups whole career, but if I'd have stuck it on in 1977 I'd be like 'who are you people and what did you do to the real Kinks?!?!?'
Little River Band are great, I don't feel guilty at all for having most of the real band's albums, even the Farnham years
Stormy Sky This one feels like two songs. The first three-quarters or so is a pleasant but somewhat anonymous midtempo number -- it just kind of pablo cruises along, with a flat verse melody, an OK but predictable chorus, and very un-Ray-like cliched lyrics about bad times ahead. Not a bad track for just chillin' -- Ray's breathy vocal is refreshing, almost seductive -- but nothing really special. Then, suddenly, the pace slows down a bit and the peacock unfurls its plumage. Dave chimes in with some of his prettiest guitar, Ray's vocals sound fuller (double-tracked?), and the song soars to unexpected heights, slowly descending to a grand Beatlesque finale. Is this the stormy sky yielding a little to the sunny side? It's almost like Ray got bored with writing a generic song for adult-contemporary radio and decided to enliven things up a bit at the end. That closing flourish makes it all worthwhile.
Stormy Sky: I should hate this song. I can't tell you how many times I thought about the theme to Three's Company when I've heard it. In some respects, it's everything wrong with the album: a fairly nondescript song that seems to be crafted solely to break into the American radio market. Yet, this is one of my favorite Kinks songs from that era! Maybe it's a less pretentious take on what they were trying to achieve with "Brother"? I don't know exactly what it is, aside from being a very well-written pop song that doesn't try to be anything other than what it is. I would later hear songs like "Poor People" by Alan Price and realize this is roughly what Ray was trying to do (not as successfully). I believe Price had a hit around the same time as Sleepwalker with "Just for You" which also has that shuffling, electric piano sound. And, yes, this is a suitable Yacht Rock candidate. The most basic definition of this would be what songs would you want to hear on a sunny afternoon sailing on your yacht, wearing your faux captain hat, blue blazer, white pants and shoes, perhaps some coke crumbs in your mustache while the super models on each arm laugh at all your jokes between serving you martinis. It's perfect fantasy music for this relaxed state of mind. Think "Brandy" by Looking Glass, or "Moonlight Feels Right" by Starbuck. "Stormy Sky" would fit right in. The song doesn't necessarily need a nautical theme (although that would be bonus points), it just has to fit this vibe.
Ditto. Their first album was phenomenal, and they learned how to write hits thereafter. No shame in loving this band, much like Supertramp!
Stormy Sky is my favorite melody on the album. Overall the songs on Sleepwalker seem unnecessarily longish to me, but Stormy Sky feels like a short song (at nearly 4 minutes, it's not) that doesn't overstay its welcome and at its conclusion I'm compelled to repeat it to enjoy it a second time. A really catchy melody has that effect on me.
Stormy Sky: I think it a beautiful song through and through. I particularly like where Dave toughens up the riff at the 2:46 mark, closing the song out with a slightly more aggressive sound. I’d vote for the storm equaling a fight, there are just too many clues to support the hidden meaning. I also agree with our fearless leader, this track would have been a better single than Brother.
Sleepless Night A rather apt title for me as i had 1 hours sleep overnight though not for the same reason as our protagonist who seems stuck in the past (and to echo one or two others here) and somewhat of a loser. In '93 i stayed 2 nights in London in a tiny flat with a platonic girlfriend and her flatmate couple. That night the stillness was broken by male screaming that sounded like a bad actor thinking he was on a porn set. It was loud and long and obnoxiously annoying and I could tell by my girlfriend's face and asides that she was thinking: a) No not again b) I want to kill him c) I really can't take another repeat performance On the 2nd night after exchanging pleasantries and wishing the other couple goodnight it promptly started again with all the screams and embarrassing dialogue from the man and not a whisper again from his speechless girlfriend. N.b. This chap was a very clumsy, unathletic pasty never seen the sun local and his lady a very spunky well proportioned bombshell. Ok you got the picture and i would not mind being him but also seriously wouldn't have alerted the street and set off nearby dogs and car alarms! Oh the song...... Pretty generic and the vocal does little for me though it's not the Kink i would skip!
Count me in for one of those for whom this is one of their favorite, if not favorite, songs on the album. As I get older, the proportion of mellow versus more raucous music I listen to has probably increased. Though it’s tough to remember for sure, I think it was one of my favorite tracks even when I first listened to the album back in 1977 when I was 19. The sentiment behind the song, and the mellow vibe, remind me of the more direct “We Can Work It Out,” to mention that “Liverpool band” again.
Stormy Sky Ok Mark the title and your write up were right To The Bone for me as Brisbane had edited 5 days and nights of constant heavy rain resulting in the ground giving way and the water causing a clay mudslide to enter 3 rooms with the h2o in my basement under the skirting board. My battle for furniture & musical Preservation along with calls to Insurance and the SES ran from 9pm to 4pm with 1 hours sleep in that 19, after having been up all day to begin with. Happier to talk about the song as it has almost alarmingly started raining yet again after having largely got the water out today! Somewhere in the intro I get a brief verse feel of Alicia Bridges "I Love The Nightlife" and later on some Santana like vocal feel but in between Ray is in full control and sounds convincing with his reassurances to his beau! A sweet song that sounds very natural all around. Edit: Didn't Ray sing about an ominous weather change on the first Preservation Act?
The coda trick on Stormy Sky is somewhat analogous to the one used in Sleepwalker, I believe it's even the same descent. I think I found out why the latter reminded me of Supertramp: Dave's guitar line is reminiscent, or rather premonitory of the Logical Song's chorus.
Sorry to hear that mate. The northern half gets monsoons and the southern gets nothing.... I hope it gets sorted asap for you.
