Our country - americana act II

"Despite a career stretching back decades, Davies will probably always be best known for the scabrous guitar riffs powering the early Kinks singles "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night. Yet this more rustic sound suits him. Our Country: Americana II and its predecessor, along with Davies' 2013 memoir Americana, offer an outsider's perspective on the beauty and peril of America, a land of confounding contradictions. Davies doesn't judge, he simply tries to understand. Maybe seeing ourselves through his eyes will have a similar effect on us".

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"If history is any indication, Ray Davies should stay away from second acts. The Kinks' Preservation Act 2 is generally regarded as one of the band's weakest albums. As usual, it's probably better to whittle the material down to a single solid album rather than expand it to over two hours, which is what happens here ... Ultimately the album is easier to appreciate as an unusual, occasionally successful and diverting artistic project that tries to make sense of Davies' love and apprehension about America, than it is to enjoy".

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"Americana, the song cycle adaptation of Davies' memoir of the same name, suffers the same pitfalls as its Preservation predecessor, with the singer/songwriter larding up Our Country with recitations, characters, allusions, and repetitions. All this extra stuff means Our Country plays very differently than its 2017 cousin Americana, even though it contains the same supporting cast ... so Our Country has its moments, but they're moments, not songs, and they're overwhelmed by his clumsy dramatic pretensions, which are undone by his reluctance to tie his theatricality into an actual narrative".

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