Ray Davies’ first new album in over nine years, Americana, will be released on April 21 via Legacy Recordings.
2007’s Working Man’s Cafe was Ray’s last album of new music although he did release two albums of newly recorded Kinks classics in the interim with The Kinks Choral Collection (2009) and See My Friends (2010).
Davies wrote and arranged the album along with co-producing with Guy Massey and John Jackson. The songs are autobiographical, telling the story of how America has been so intertwined in Davies’ professional life over the last fifty-plus years.
The songs on Americana dig into the rich American musical tapestry, through the lens of Davies’ own wholly unique American experience. The music swerves from the open-road manifesto of The Great Highway, to a delicate duet with The Jayhawks’ Karen Grotberg on Message From The Road, to Poetry, which offers a vital reminder of Davies’ ability to spin small detail into penetrating truth. The album also features a number of short spoken-word passages from Davies’ memoir. A second volume to Americana will be a released later in 2017.
The track list:
Americana
The Deal
Poetry
Message From The Road
A Place In Your Heart
The Mystery Room
Silent Movie
Rock ‘N’ Roll Cowboys
Change For Change
The Man Upstairs
I’ve Heard That Beat Before
A Long Drive Home To Tarzana
The Great Highway
The Invaders
Wings Of Fantasy
