The Kinks

Phobia is an eccentric Kinks album and is the closest this band came to heavy metal. Riff-heavy and lumbering, songs such as "Wall of Fire" and "Still Searching" conjure up the antics of AC/DC and Alice Cooper. Ray Davies seems to have become a disgruntled elder statesman as he grumbles about death, disillusionment, stolen cars and his brother. It's worth a listen just to see what it's like when a skilled wordsmith goes off the rails.

"Still Searching," one of the sixteen cuts on Phobia, finds Ray Davies singing, "Lookin' at
another sign for another town/Wondering if I'm ever gonna settle down." The yearning of
the forty-eight-year-old chief Kink resounds unsettlingly. Davies personifies the Eternal
Misfit, a disaffected dandy – and twenty-nine years after "You Really Got Me" he's still
unsatisfied. "We stretched the bounds but always kept the code," he declares o... More >