In “Next Door Neighbor,” Davies’s wry eye is trained on desperate housewives (and husbands). Detail has always been his strong suit, whether he’s playing the part of a well-respected man “doing the best things so conservatively” or, on the new album’s acerbic “Stand Up Comic,” a clueless buffoon who doesn’t realize that “Jack the Lad has become Oscar Wilde,” whether he’s “The Tourist” “checking out the slums/With my plastic Visa/Drinking with my chums” or, in “Other People’s Lives,” a cynical tabloid reporter who knows that his readers “follow anything you write/As long as it’s in black and white.”
His world view is summed up in the bleakly optimistic “Over My Head.” “In a world that is full of hatred/And about to descend/I just smile and pretend/I’m a million miles away from it all,” he sings in his sand-and-silk voice. Other People’s Lives offers many such tales of survival, all colorfully told by one of rock and roll’s actual survivors.
Ray Davies | Orpheum Theatre, 1 Hamilton Place, Boston | March 28 | 617.931.2000
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On the Web:
Ray Davies: http://www.raydavies.info/
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