THE KINKS - MUSWELL HILLBILLIES @ 50

 

November 24th marks the 50th anniversary of the release of The Kinks’ 10th studio album, Muswell Hillbillies, which was issued on this day in 1971.

Coming in with the first wave of the British Invasion of the early 1960s and following on the success of their blistering proto-metal hits like You Really Got Me, The Kinks had built a career refining their songwriting sophistication through a series of albums which brought out Ray Davies’ talents as a storyteller to a degree that was quite unequaled in the realm of pop music. Yet, while they’d had success in the UK charts throughout the latter half of the decade, the US was pretty much a lost territory after their 1965 tour resulted in the American Federation of Musicians refusing to grant them performance permits until 1969, likely due to their rowdy reputation on the road. The result was that the US mostly forgot about them for the back half of the ’60s.

That began to change in 1970 with the release of the album, Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One. The album’s title track, Lola, an account of a confused romantic encounter with a transvestite, became an unlikely top 10 hit on both sides of the Atlantic and brought the band back into the spotlight in the US. That album also signaled the ended of their contracts with Pye and Reprise Records as they signed a five album deal with RCA. That got them enough of an advance to set up their own recording studio, where they recorded Muswell Hillbillies.

Muswell Hill is the area where the Davies brothers grew up and the themes of the album delved into working class subjects reflective of their background. Critically, the album was a success and garnered glowing reviews right out of the gate and the success of its predecessor had seemingly set them on course to continue that trend as they began their tenure with their new label. Yet neither critical acclaim nor momentum from the previous album managed to secure significant sales for Muswell Hillbillies, even though it had all the earmarks to succeed. The songs are top-notch, the styles reflect both British sensibilities, when it leaned into music hall influences, while also bringing in American influences of bluegrass and country. For many, it is considered the band’s last truly “great” album! Yet it flagged in the stores and ended up signalling the band entering into a downward trend until they rebounded in 1977, reinvigorated by the “new wave” vibrancy of the times.

While the band would go on to have more hits in the late ‘70s and beyond, Muswell Hillbillies, in retrospect, seems to be a marker of the end of their “golden age” that began with Face to Face in 1966. It caps a run of music that remains peerless in terms of its visceral connection to its subjects and Ray Davies’ ability to deftly concoct his narratives around the framework of meticulously crafted, unforgettable pop music. It’s music that defined the gold standard for its genre of narrative driven, folksy realism.