One aspect of growing older, I guess, is the lack of desire to review movies or relisten to albums ad nauseam the way I once did. So when I find there's a movie or album that I am listening to repeatedly over an extended period of time, I have to suspect it's a pretty good album.
This is the case with The Kink's 1971 album Muswell Hillbillies. With steel guitar leads and lines like "I'm gonna miss her bloodshot alcoholic eyes", it's in the country-rock style of The Stones' albums of the same time period (Think "Country Honk" and "Let It Bleed" from Let It Bleed, "Dead Flowers" from Sticky Fingers, and practically the entirety of Exile On Main Street), and more than just delivering what it is that Stones fans want (namely, more Stones country-rock era material), it's very, very well written.
No famous songs on this one, like "Lola", but a number of them deserve to be better-renown, especially the sing-along "Have A Cuppa Tea" and the rocker "Muswell Hillbilly", both very catchy and very smart, Ray Davies at the top of his game. In addition to these are some of Davies' patented 'These days suck, compared to the past'-style songs, like "20th Century Man" and "Complicated Life", just as funny and sardonic as "Ape Man."
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