Ray Davies - See My Friends
One look at this album cover and you’re a little worried. Ray Davies and friends, eh? A couple of tracks in you’re left wondering how this abomination ever made it onto record. It is, for the most part, a truly horrible album and a self-indulgent blight on the Kinks back catalogue. You have Bruce Springsteen adding an unnecessary amount of grit to Better Things, Billy Corgan’s hilariously bad version of All Day And All Of The Night, Mumford & Suns adding the unashamedly yet unironic hoedowned take on Days and the Metallica version of You Really Got Me (often called the first heavy metal song) which is at least passably interesting. One of the few that does work quite well is the Black Francis version of This Is Where I Belong because it sounds like a natural overlap of the two styles instead of a twisted amalgamation of things that really should be left well alone. Devoted Kinks fans (like me) might want to give this one a miss, even though it looks ‘curious’.
