The Kinks: Low Budget

2 Ratings: 5.0

2006 audio CD release

All tracks have been digitally remastered by Bob Ludwig (Gateway Mastering, Portland, Maine). This is a Hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players. 1979's LOW BUDGET … see full wiki

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Fresh From The Time Capsule

Aug 27, 2010

by NJExit34
posted in Music Matters

Rating:

If you were knocked unconscious at a 1978 Kinks show and found yourself suddenly waking up in the time of Rip Van Obama, the sound of Low Budget in heavy rotation would not seem out of place in the least. And perhaps, given Ray Davies penchant for playing with our heads, it might be an interesting sleight of hand to see Low Budget re-emerge as a brand new work on iTunes and enjoy the reaction to it's still fresh and troubling perspective on the decline of empire, tenuous alliances and pervasive economic insecurity.

Whether the political scorecard has morphed to Bush and Brown from Carter and Thatcher and your Pinto has given way to a Prius, every track on the Kinks remarkable (but dimly remembered) 1978-comeback release is still uncomfortably prescient in 2008.

Hate slumming at Wal-Mart for the finest in Chinese fashion - try the title-track on for size (if it fits.) Got four dollar petrol still ringing in your ears - fill-up with A Gallon of Gas. Think America's stature has taken a worldwide beating - there's the disc's best song, Catch Me Now I'm Falling. Spending more time cocooning with your mortgaged Plasma television - I'm sure you'll be fond of Moving Pictures. Distempering your offspring with scripts of Ritalin - just pop a few tabs of Attitude. The entire record is a mirror held up to our collective faces that still punches with the ferocity of a much newer work.

I know there are many Kinks fans who were depressed at the latter-day arena rock incarnation of the band and much preferred their Kinks Kinkdom or Preservation Society, British Invasion sound. Frankly, I never understood why we had to choose as the muscled-up version of the band represented here is every bit the musical and lyrical equal of the "mod" Kinks who arrived in the early sixties. In any era, Low Budget is a timeless collection deserving of some newfound respect.

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