KEY POINTS:
Herald rating: * *
It's not only imminent tourist and head Kink Davies' second solo album but his second album in two years. His prolific rate of output could be traced back to 2004 when he was shot during a New Orleans mugging - the US has never been kind to Davies, the Kinks were pretty much run out of town during the British invasion of the 1960s. So he might be forgiven a certain bitterness here on songs like No One Listen on which he rails at those who stuffed up the case against his assailant.
If only the songs had better tunes and his lyrical turns of phrase didn't feel like that of a letters-to-the-editor regular, rather that the once beautiful satire of the Godfather of Britpop.
Elsewhere Davies takes wide aim at globalisation (Vietnam Cowboys), gentrification (the title track), and war (Peace in our Time). They all get buoyant pub rock backings but all too often his songs feel like a list of complaints forced into toe-tapping arrangements.
That leaves really the only moment to grip as the rambling Morphine Song, on which Davies paints a picture, presumably of his New Orleans hospital ward and its colourful residents as seen through his anaesthetic haze. More songs like that and Working Man's Cafe might have marked the second stage of a remarkable comeback. But it's not.
Label: Shock
Verdict: Britpop figurehead gets a lot off his chest
