Ray Davies With The Crouch End Festival Chorus - The Kinks Choral Collection

Hymnal reworkings of big hits

What started as a 20-minute interlude at the BBC’s series of Electric Proms concerts in 2007 has bloomed into a spellbinding album on which some of the greatest British pop songs of all time take on entirely new characters. Accompanied by the full-bodied voices of 65 of his North London neighbours, Davies has trawled through his back catalogue and infused it with the spirit of Benjamin Britten.

The more dramatic Kinks numbers such as Waterloo Sunset and Celluloid Heroes take on an added grandeur, while the innate “Englishness” of selections from The Village Green Preservation Society especially benefit from sounds more usually heard echoing across pastoral hamlets from cacophonous church buildings. The a cappella reading of See My Friends retains the eeriness of the original, but elsewhere Davies is smart enough to use his choir sparingly, never allowing it to swamp the music.

You Really Got Me and All Day & All Of The Night are perhaps too rocky to begin with to survive the new treatment but, for the most part, it’s a powerfully evocative record that adds fresh colours and detail to some already gorgeous musical landscapes.

4 stars 4 stars 4 stars 4 stars

Decca | 2703909

Reviewed by Terry Staunton
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