Muswell Hillbillies

Over their long career, The Kinks experimented with many eclectic styles, interpolating elements of jazz, jug band music, and cabaret into the standard-issue country and blues roots of rock ’n’ roll. Ray Davies envisioned himself a songwriter tabulating the fortunes of the ever-sinking middle class and the disappearing British empire. For 1971’s Muswell Hillbillies, Davies takes the angle of working-class drinkers and combines it with his own scattered psyche, setting all to vaudeville horns, sashaying rhythms, and the occasional raw blues guitar. It's not the country record its title implies, nor is it redolent of the band's power-chord past.