The Kinks

Another smash American hit for the Kinks. "Destroyer" deservedly became an FM radio perennial, but "Better Things" and "Art Lover" rank among Davies' best songs of the period.

Hook-laden and hard-rocking, this is the best-crafted Kinks album in over a decade, which means that for someone who's found Ray Davies's world-view increasingly mean-spirited and mush-brained, it's also the biggest turnoff. Back when he was chairing the Village Green Preservation Society, Ray's dotty lyricism put his nostalgia in appealing and appropriate musical perspective; his current clean-cut arena style makes him sound smug and strident, as well it should. Opening with a piece of radio pimpery in which a deejay becomes not just a benefactor (lie enough these days) but a hero of modern mythos, it moves on to songs about paranoids, battered wives, murderers, and dirty old men that reveal minimal charity for either side of the interactions they put down. Giveaways the self-fulfilling "Predictable" and the misanthropic title tune. (Grade - C+)