THE KINKS
Arthur, or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire (1969)
Pye/Reprise
Produced by RAY DAVIES

ARTHUR is not an album that moves much beyond its predecessor, instead enlivening it with louder guitars, more elaborate production, and more direct lyrics; it does find Ray Davies persisting with the same themes that obsessed him on THE VILLAGE GREEN PRESERVATION SOCIETY. This time he's added a story -- or rather, a story was thrust open him; this was originally to be the soundtrack to a BBC miniseries about a bitter Englishman who found paradise in Australia. The theme was ideal for Davies but the deal fell through, and all that remains is the music.

The Kinks had not had a U.S. hit since "Tired of Waiting for You" in 1965, but at this point they were still determined to make a mark on the world; ironically, as soon as Davies would give up and issue his sardonic reaction to fame, "Lola" and "Apeman" would explode, but essentially this is the last album the Kinks released before resigning to cult status.

Nobody pretends that Davies had not taken over by now. His most unwilling bandmate, bassist Peter Quaife, had been dropped, and now the others were along for a ride with his neuroses. To be fair, he's not indulgent here at all and he wouldn't be until his regrettable concept-album period in the '70s. His humanist diatribes on ARTHUR are timely and genuinely moving, offering rock's best antiwar song ever in "Some Mother's Song" and one of the most poignant rejections of conventional social values of the '60s with the elaborate "Shangri-La."

With ambitious material like this, rockers walk a fine line between expression and overblown foolishness, musically and lyrically, but out of all supposed "concept albums," this outruns even SGT. PEPPER in its fresh, unpretentious signal-to-noise ratio. Only "Australia," at six minutes and forty-six seconds, dwindles into noodling, and all of the songs have merit. The Beatles are an appropriate comparison, with the Kinks adopting their classic guise of melody that conquers by outweighing message until both walk on equal ground. For all of his overwhelming gifts, Ray Davies understood the value of restraint. The brash straight-outta-KONTROVERSY "Brainwashed" gets under your skin before you even stop and listen to the lyrics, and all of these frequently somber ("Young and Innocent Days") and bitterly ironic (the outrageously sweeping opener, "Victoria") lyrics fuse with one impossibly catchy song after another until you're bouncing along with the painfully honest one ("Nothing to Say") about a badly dissolved relationship between father and son. SOMETHING ELSE made its jokes clearer and its sentiment more conventional, while VILLAGE GREEN had been drastically uncommercial pub-pop. ARTHUR's layered sensibilities, then, make it the Kinks' most sophisticated LP.

You might think of ARTHUR as a British reaction to the folk-rock explosion, preserving as it does (and as did no other Invasion group) many traditions of European music (see "Arthur," "Mr. Churchill Says," and "She's Bought a Hat Like Princess Marina") alien to a U.S. audience that had forgotten the band long before this anyway. They can encompass all this and even a bravely uncompromised antiwar, at times almost anti-society message yet remain universal; "Victoria" and "Drivin'" are, then and now, perfect pop singles that challenged in ways the Beatles no longer could. They don't couch their dramatics in a falsified stylish veneer, which at the close of the '60s should have made them more important than anyone allowed them to be.

ARTHUR was a major critical success everywhere but it failed to attract an audience even in Britain. Even if Ray Davies resorted to theatrical role-playing too often, sidestepping the rock orthodoxy that's been a fine expression of plenty of drastic ideas for fifty years, his passion and the uniform poignance of his songwriting continue to inspire everyone who comes in contact with the Kinks today. They weren't made for the '60s, because no time could define them; they couldn't be at one with a culture the way the Beatles were or even a part of a scene. They existed outside of everything, which may be why they are still fresh today. ARTHUR's subdued vitality is the quintessential work of the band, and if its inability to find an audience was crushing then, all we can do is marvel at the power of "Shangri-La," "Yes Sir, No Sir," and "Young and Innocent Days" and give new life to Davies' quiet, consistently affecting energy.