The Kinks - Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One [3CD Deluxe Edition] (2020)

"Lola" gave the Kinks an unexpected hit, and its crisp, muscular sound, pitched halfway between acoustic folk and hard rock, provided a new style for the band. However, the song only hinted at what its accompanying album, Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One, was all about. It didn't matter that Ray Davies just had his first hit in years -- he had suffered greatly at the hands of the music industry and he wanted to tell the story in song. Hence, Lola -- a loose concept album about Ray Davies' own psychosis and bitter feelings toward the music industry. He never really delivers a cohesive story, but the record holds together because it's one of his strongest sets of songs. Dave Davies contributes the lovely "Strangers" and the appropriately paranoid "Rats," but this is truly Ray's show, as he lashes out at ex-managers (the boisterous vaudevillian "The Moneygoround"), publishers ("Denmark Street"), TV and music journalists (the hard-hitting "Top of the Pops"), label executives ("Powerman"), and, hell, just society in general ("Apeman," "Got to Be Free"). If his wit wasn't sharp, the entire project would be insufferable, but the album is as funny as it is angry. Furthermore, he balances his bile with three of his best melancholy ballads: "This Time Tomorrow," "A Long Way from Home," and the anti-welfare and union "Get Back in Line," which captures working-class angst better than any other rock song. These tracks provide the spine for a wildly unfocused but nonetheless dazzling tour de force that reveals Ray's artistic strengths and endearing character flaws in equal measure.
[The 50th anniversary edition of Lola Vs Powerman is expanded by three discs filled with rarities that span the decades. The Kinks needed to cast a wide net for this 2020 reissue since Lola received a healthy double-disc expansion in 2014, one that unearthed the outtakes "Anytime" and "The Good Life," which are both here in new mixes. "Anytime" also seeds the newly created "The Follower -- Any Time 2020," where new spoken word elements are interwoven with the original track. There's a lot of this kind of thing on this 50th Anniversary Edition, including several "Ray's Kitchen Sink" tracks, which contain Ray Davies and his brother Dave discussing the album's songs while music plays in the background. A bunch of mono mixes and alternate takes, most previously reissued, are here along with an "Apeman" from Unplugged, selections from the Ray-starring production The Long Distance Piano Player, Ray singing "Lola" with the Danish National Chamber Orchestra, and a version of "A Long Way from Home" from Ray's 2006 Austin City Limits. Some of this is strange, much of it is good, and all the worthwhile cuts were on the 2014 set, so this is for the hardcore Kinks fan, the one who appreciates the oddities of the bonus material instead of cursing the absence of unheard music (which likely does not exist).]