Plymouth Evening Herald, Saturday October 15, 2005

POP LEGEND STILL ON SONG AFTER 40 YEARS

RAY DAVIES
Plymouth Pavillions
Friday October 14
Review: Bill Richards

Ray Davies underlined his legendary status as both master song-writer and performer with a stunning show at the Pavillions last night.

Any doubts that age had withered his enthusiasm for live music were blown away early on in his rapturously-received two hour set. Animated and engaging, the genius behind the Kinks, has transcended his position as sixties Brit-pop icon, to sixty year old troubadour and served notice, if his new songs are anything to go by, that he is still a force to be reckoned with.

Davies stopped off in Plymouth - ' I don't think I've played here before '- he said in one of his many conversations with his captivated audience, as part of a world tour to publicise his new EP, The Tourist and new album, or CD if you must, Other People's Lives. which comes out next year.

Backed by a young and accomplished three-piece band, Davies demonstrated with songs like After The Fall, that he had lost none of his descriptive powers. Davies showed he is still more than capable of supplying a storming set, but he was at his most beguiling, when he turned to his back catalogue of tunes. In case anyone had forgotten, Davies is one of the greatest writers of the intelligent three-minute pop song that Britain has ever produced. The hauntingly-beautiful Days and Tired Of Waiting morphed seamlessly into the despair of Dead End Street, and when he and the band turned up the volume for his other classics, Lola and All Day And All Of The Night the effect was magical.

Davies encored with the timeless Waterloo Sunset and concluded with perhaps his most enduring classic, You Really Got Me.

And he did, and the rest of us lucky enough to be there too.