Original released on LP RS 6423 (US 1970, November 25)
and on LP PYE NSPL 18359 (UK 1970, November 27)
"Lola" gave the Kinks unexpected hit and its crisp, muscular sound, pitched halfway between acoustic folk and hard rock, provided a new style for the band. However, the song only hinted at what its accompanying album "Lola Versus the Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One" was all about. It didn't matter that Ray Davies just had his first hit in years - he had suffered greatly at the hands of the music industry and he wanted to tell the story in song. Hence, "Lola" - a loose concept album about Ray Davies' own psychosis and bitter feelings toward the music industry. Davies never really delivers a cohesive story, but the record holds together because it's one of his strongest set of songs. Dave Davies contributes the lovely "Strangers" and the appropriately paranoid "Rats," but this is truly Ray' show, as he lashes out at ex-managers (the boisterous vaudevillian "The Moneygoround"), publishers ("Denmark Street"), TV and music journalists (the hard-hitting "Top of the Pops"), label executives ("Powerman"), and, hell, just society in general ("Apeman," "Got to Be Free"). If his wit wasn't sharp, the entire project would be insufferable, but the album is as funny as it is angry. Furthermore, he balances his bile with three of his best melancholy ballads: "This Time Tomorrow," "A Long Way From Home," and the anti-welfare and union "Get Back in Line," which captures working-class angst better than any other rock song. These songs provide the spine for a wildly unfocused but nonetheless dazzling tour de force that reveals Ray's artistic strengths and endearing character flaws in equal measure. (Stephen Erlewine in AllMusic)
Original released on LP PYE NSPL 18365
(UK 1971, March 26)
Ray Davies and company had already participated in one failed television musical when the movie "Percy" came along - it wasn't as original as "Arthur", nor did Davies have nearly as much to do with its creation, but he still outdid himself given the material at hand. Directed and co-produced by Ralph Thomas, who had been responsible for some brilliant thrillers ("The Clouded Yellow", "Above Us the Waves") and very popular comedies ("Doctor in the House") in past decades, "Percy" was the story of the world's first penis transplant (it was probably inspired, or at least justified, by big-budget efforts of the period like Myra Breckinridge). Although virtually unseen in the United States, it was still popular enough to yield a sequel ("Percy's Progress"), but its real impact came from its soundtrack. Davies wrote some hauntingly beautiful ballads and some solid blues and country as well - "God's Children" and "Animals in the Zoo" have turned up on some career anthologies, but there's a lot more to "Percy" than those two tracks. "Completely" is as fine a slow blues as the band ever recorded, with a sizzling performance by Dave Davies, and "Dreams" is a pretty solid rocker, even up alongside "Animals in the Zoo." To this day the album has never appeared in the U.S. catalog - recorded at the tail end of their contract with Pye Records in England and Warner/Reprise in America, and connected with a movie that was never going to see much exposure in the U.S.A., Reprise passed on it at the time. (Bruce Eder in AllMusic)
