This Is Where I Belong: The Songs of Ray Davies & The Kinks

If the Kinks didn’t invent the witty, literate wing of power pop, it at least stands to reason that most bands in that category at least owe them a debt. This Is Where I Belong: The Songs of Ray Davies & the Kinks is a strong exhibition of where that led at the turn of the 21st Century, even if its most fascinating moments are the genre outliers. When a band reminds you of the way Ray Davies’ odd blend of pathos and archness was put to use in upbeat-yet-tender rock’n’roll, you get some fine homages — especially Fountains of Wayne’s opening “Better Things,” a gracious breakup song that became a burst of defiantly hopeful optimism when they played it on Late Night with Conan O’Brien performance ten days after 9/11. But even if many of the other more straightforward adaptations are better reminders of what makes the Kinks exceptional than the artists who cover them, hearing Matthew Sweet’s “Big Sky” or Fastball’s “Till the End of the Day” or Ron Sexsmith’s title cut makes it all sound feel like a welcome and crucial part of alt-rock’s DNA. More fascinating are the tracks where the Kinks’ stylistic detours into other genres are matched by their subjects — Bebel Gilberto nodding towards her mother Astrid’s influence on 1967’s “No Return” and making its bossa undercurrents undeniable, or Tim O’Brien translating “Muswell Hillbilly” into a first-language adaptation of the Americana that the Kinks cheekily (if compellingly) dabbled in. And then there’s the less-faithful excursions: Lambchop guts the ironic tropicalisms out of “Art Lover” and renders it into a slow, pretty-yet-unsettling dirge that drains all the whimsy out of the narrator’s Lolita fixations, while Yo La Tengo take advantage of the quietude of “Fancy” to lean into a meditative, droning atmosphere the original merely hints at. And for a closer? Why not bring in another previously recorded live performance — this time from a 1995 episode of the British series The White Room featuring the man of the hour himself, as Davies is joined by Damon Albarn for an acoustic duet on “Waterloo Sunset”.