Ray Davies Announces The Kinks Are Officially Reuniting With A New Album

On Monday, Ray Davies made the surprise announcement on Channel 4 that The Kinks were planning to reunite and were already in the process of “making a new Kinks album.”

With band members heavily embroiled in a feud that had been ongoing since The Kinks threw in the towel and disbanded in 1996, The Kinks appear to have made up now for the most part, and are actively engaged in the first music they have created together as a group in more than 20 years, as The Telegraph report.

With Dave Davies and Mick Avory in the studio plugging away, Ray Davies has admitted that there may still be just a little bit of friction left between Dave and Mick, but then optimistically added that he believes the pair’s differences will help spur The Kinks on musically.

“The trouble is, the two remaining members – my brother Dave and Mick – never got along very well. But I’ve made that work in the studio and it’s fired me up to make them play harder, and with fire.”

If you’re wondering what it was that compelled Ray to decide that The Kinks should reunite after all these years, he says it was just three words: The Rolling Stones. Davies admitted that he felt “inspired by the Rolling Stones, who recently completed a European tour to critical acclaim.”

Ray Davies then went on to add that he already has a number of different songs that he wrote before The Kinks went their separate ways, and felt like now was the perfect time to finally finish composing them.

“I’ve got all these songs that I wrote for the band when we – not broke up – parted company, and I think it’s kind of an appropriate time to do it.”

When asked about the specifics of reuniting and future shows, Ray did say that there were more immediate plans to play “in the pub later on.”

Davies also noted that despite the deep affection he feels for Mick Jagger, The Kinks won’t be putting on a showy, glitzy affair as you might expect from The Rolling Stones.

“It won’t be well-organised like the Rolling Stones. You must praise the Rolling Stones for being great at publicity and a great band great at organising their careers and Mick Jagger has done an incredible PR job and it’s kind of inspiring to see them doing it. But The Kinks will probably be playing the local bar.”

With new solo album Our Country: Americana II due out on June 29 and the surprise announcement of The Kinks reuniting and putting out a new record, no one can say that Ray Davies isn’t an inspired and ambitious man.