A KINK’S VISUAL THOUGHTS

“THINK VISUAL.” The Kinks. MCA.

It takes nerve for Ray Davies--rock’s No. 1 recycler--to title a song “Repetition,” especially one with a chord progression not unlike that of the Kinks’ mid-’60s hit “All Day and All of the Night” and the Who’s “Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere.” But then, the repetition and ennui of modern life (and various escapes from it) have always been Davies’ favorite subject matter.

As he’s done many times before, Davies bemoans the stifling clock-punch regularity of “Working at the Factory,” and shows how the masters exploit the masses’ need for escape and then invent new ways to keep everybody in line.

If Davies could borrow Pete Townshend’s questing soul as well as musical passages, his place in rock history might seem more significant than it does. Even without that, though, he has been one of the most consistently interesting and entertaining auteurs of rock for the past two decades. This album does nothing to alter that perception.