Cashville411.com

Life sometimes serves up unexpected, traumatic events. When these events occur in the life of an artist, the impact often is reflected in their art. Such is the case with the latest solo release by Ray Davies, Working Man’s Café.

As has been well-documented, the legendary frontman of The Kinks was mugged and shot on Jan. 4, 2004 in New Orleans, where he was living at the time. Not surprisingly, that life-threatening event prominently informs the lyrics of a number of the songs on his new record. Several of the songs deal directly with the shooting and its aftermath. Others reflect Davies’ changed perspective; his realization that life is precious and can be gone in a moment.

“Morphine Song,” with its sing-song chorus of “listen to my heartbeat” and blue-eyed-soul horn section, belies the fact it is about Davies’ time in intensive care after the shooting. “No One Listen” humorously documents his realization that being one of the fathers of the Brit Invasion matters little when dealing with the bureaucracy of the New Orleans criminal justice system: “Hey, man! I am the innocent party here.” “Angola (Wrong Side of the Law),” one of three bonus tracks, finds the artist magnanimously able to understand the probable plight of his assailants. On “In A Moment,” Davies sings, “In a second it can change from night to day.”

Of the material on Working Man’s Café not clearly related to the shooting incident, there is a mix of songs about New Orleans and the woman he followed there (“Peace In Our Time,” “Imaginary Man,” “The Voodoo Walk”), personal introspection (“You’re Asking Me,” “The Real World,” “Hymn for a New Age”) and the kind of lyrical satire of the modern world that has marked his songwriting since the early ‘70s, this time taking on globalization (“Vietnam Cowboys,” One More Time,” “Working Man’s Cafe”).

Overall, Davies is less mocking, less whimsical, more world-weary, more self-doubting on this, his second solo album — that is what getting shot and facing one’s own mortality will do to you — but that does not lessen the record’s power.

Davies recorded the album last year over 14 days in February and March at Ray Kennedy’s Nashville-area studio, with Kennedy coproducing, and John Hurley and Kennedy handling the engineering.

Backed by in-demand session cats (guitarist Pat Buchanan, bassist Craig Young, and drummer Shannon Otis Forrest), Davies was able to fully explore his life-long love affair with Southern music. Unlike Robert Plant’s recent experiment with American roots music, Working Man’ Café doesn’t veer too far from The Kinks’ post-British Invasion, eclectic, musical mix, deviating most on the Southern-soul-infused “In a Moment” and the swampy “The Voodoo Walk.” The result is nothing less than Davies’ most complete record in more than 25 years.